Advent - a cry in the darkness

The month before Christmas is, for most western Christians, Advent. I don’t know how it works in the southern hemisphere but it fits in well with the shortening days, the growing cold, the deepening darkness. In older days, when you never knew if your land had produced enough food for the drought of winter, it was a worrying time. ‘Will we survive?’

For Christians desperation has always been lurking in our spiritual life. Many people talk about Advent as being about Heaven and Hell, about Death and Judgement, and the weakness of medieval theology was that it imagined the crisis was after death. For most people throughout history life has been fearful, brutal and often short. To be a Christian in many places today is to be at least concerned not so much about what happens after you die, but how you might die as a Christian, or how bad living as a Christian may be when so many people are against you. It may just be the mocking of the supercilious and ignorant, it may be the violence of a Hindu or Muslim extremist, or a dictator who just hates you. It may be sudden death at their hands.

Advent is about the coming of Christ’s reign of justice and mercy, of graciousness and generosity. The great hymns like ‘Lo! He comes with clouds descending’ have a literalist understanding, and I wish I had that too. But certainly the Christian ideal in the New Testament is that God’s reign on earth is something to which we should look forward, no matter how terrifying medieval religion made it. It is a time when daily bread is plentiful, where debts are simply forgotten, where the fears of what the future, with its tests and trials no longer mean anything. If you are living in chaotic Somalia, or oppressed West Papua, on a decaying estate in Middlesborough, let alone Mosul or Aleppo, God’s reign is something not only to hope for, but to be part of the process of building.

‘O come, O come Emmanuel.’ A medieval antiphon has become part of the mood music. It is a call for rescue. We may hide it in religious words, redeem, ransom, but they are words used by the desperate poor who have taken their last goods to the Pawnbroker, or whose son has been kidnapped. They are the words of desperate people. We get lulled into the cosy familiarity of Advent, but the Gospel in the old tradition on the first Sunday was the coming of Jesus into Jerusalem, and the rural poor shouting outside the bastion of the urban elite, ‘Hosanna!’ Hosanna is no shout of praise. It is a cry of desperation. Save us! Rescue us.

That is the call for the Church this Advent when so many of the failed have been persuaded to vote for an alternative way of thinking because the present system has failed them. It is a call to those churches which don’t yet get involved to say that the economic structures of this world are not the economics of the Kingdom, and they must be challenged and changed.

What will be lost as Britain loses its religion?

Recent statistics tell us that there are fewer Christians than non-believers in Britain. Oddly, more people pray than don’t pray, and I think that (if we don’t bother to get picky about how accurate these figures are) if we take these two bits of data seriously we ought to make sense out of them.

We forget that 400 years ago Britain was in the throes of a religious and social turmoil which would have people behaving like ISIS, the Saudi monarchy and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Obsessed with theological details and insisting upon ways in which people performed the cult, the powerful would use the most extreme forms of coercion to ensure uniformity. By the end of the seventeenth century Britain had gone through a massive religious and social change. In 1500 the church had great wealth, the priests had great power and the people in general obeyed them. By 1700 the state had taken control of the church, including its land, and the parson had no monopoly of power, no ability to coerce, and it would seem that religious practice was dull and formal, and very varied.

The people of England, Wales and Scotland adhered to a Protestant narrative, but had had enough of the two centuries of violent coercion and created cool Christianity. Only with the rise of the Methodists did some passion return, strangely warming the hearts of people, and then the Anglo-Catholics brought in romance and beauty; both encouraged a sense of mystery and awe. But in general most people were cool about religion. They believed in a God of order, in a life after death, but not too passionately.

The industrial revolution brought change and uncertainty. Rural Britain found people moving into the towns and there people found religion to be a binding and social force. Church and Chapel gave urban workers what the village had given, a sense of connectedness and community. But it gave much more. Different religious groups saw the need to challenge the ills of capitalist urban Britain. They were integral in different reform movements, from the anti-slavery Wilberforce and Newton, to the care for workers with Quakers like Rowntree and Cadbury. Methodists sought respectability by huge donations to the good of towns, and committed reformers used the Christian message to make society a better place. The odd mystic Blake saw the need to build the Kingdom of God, the new Jerusalem in England because he could not see it. The radical equality practised by Jesus and the first Christians was not seen: was Jerusalem builded here? No. Let’s do it then, Let’s build it.

And other things happened. Industrial society encouraged singing and music. Inexpensive art. Not music for the elite, but for the people. Youngsters didn’t need to sit exams for their instruments, they played in the bands and orchestras. The now partly literate (thanks to denominational schooling) sand their hymns in harmony in their chapels and new choirs in churches meant a developing musical scene with new music, new anthems, chants, canticles being learnt, and children were busy: instrumental practice, choir practice, services. ‘Praise the Lord’, the Reverend Eli Jenkins was able to proclaim in Under Milk Wood in 1954, ‘we are a musical nation.’

There was a huge variety of Christianity. Much of it was about doing. About mass participation in worship, often several times on a Sunday and sometimes midweek. About caring for the poor and needy, establishing massive housing projects, soup kitchens, all sorts of charitable projects. In general these were based on a Christ-based understanding of the world. Not a sophisticated theology, but an understanding that faith is about works. In wealthier places it meant the commissioning of new pieces of art: musical commissions from major composers, new windows, mosaics, whole buildings built by craftsmen to express a sense that religion matters, that the sense of awe discovered in a beautiful building is important, that the stories inform us. And the huge choirs and orchestras now found in the cities naturally sang in secular halls the stories which underlay people’s lives: old works like ‘Messiah’ and new ones like ‘Elijah’ or ‘The Apostles.’

What ordinary people thought is not always easy to say. Christianity is in essence a meditation on Christ. Different people reflect in different ways. The English saw him as an exemplar, one to follow. Some saw him as the terrifying judge, and certainly many clergy tried to have power by threatening their flocks. But in a society where going to church had not been a major activity for centuries until the industrial revolution this wasn’t always successful.

But Christ as exemplar is where much of socialism in Britain finds its root. The ethics of non-conformity is about doing good to others, about service. The theologians of the established church reflected this in a theology in which Christ is God sharing our humanity, in teaching us to be human, rather that in the old theology of sacrifice (whatever that means in modern society).

So it was that the assumption in post-war Britain was that refugees should be cared for, that we should keep rationing so that those who were so lately our enemies could have some food, that Coventry should rebuild its cathedral committed to reconciliation, its first aim was to remember Christ’s words, Father, Forgive.

Of course we have no idea what people believed in their heart of hearts. But the stories which inspired them were those told in Sunday School of the Good Samaritan (hence the Samaritans), or the journey to Emmaus (Emmaus today is a homeless people’s charity). And Vaughan Williams, vicar’s son and person of doubt had the Pilgrim’s Progress as his text, so that whatever questions he had about doctrine, the story was what he loved.

The reaction of some today to the people fleeing the catastrophes in western Asia and Africa, of giving not one hoot for them is not the reaction of that Britain. The isolationism doesn’t reflect the pained yearning for reconciliation of the bombed cities, the desire to share their commonalities. It comes from a world view not based on the Protestant Christ, the healer, the one who shares in the suffering of his people.

Faith is about uncertainty. Any scientist will say much the same about science which is always provisional on someone disproving the latest idea. But faith and doubt are about how we tell the stories, how we sing them, how we live them out. The Lloyds Building and the Shard will never have the same impact as Wells Cathedral or York Minster, never be the places where ordinary people burst into song. Faith is best expressed in poetry, music and service. The mystery of God is best told in the stories, stories being told in the York Mysteries; but it is best lived out in the thousands of volunteers who run the food banks and urban estate projects, in the refugee welcome centres and the quiet visiting of the lonely. These are still overwhelmingly run by churchgoers, many of whom find doctrine and dogma baffling, but realise that going to church, being the church is not primarily about believing impossible things but about a meditation on Jesus.

Britain be brave: we have a high calling in Europe

The debate over the UK's relationship with the EU has been depressing at best. Guesses are trotted out as statistics, people make downright lies, and the nature of the relationship is hardly questioned. It is as though there is bickering over the contents of the house as one spouse plans to move out, or maybe as one member of the commune thinks of leaving.
What is not asked about is the very nature of the dream that caused the relationship, nor the pain that will be felt after the departure by all around, except in monetary terms.

I live in York. It is not in the centre of Europe. It is not the most powerful city in Britain and not the most influential area, but it was the capital of a Kingdom of Northumbria in days past and that kingdom was a treasury for some of the greatest late Roman cultural expressions. Its influence, the influence of Northumbrian saints was felt across Europe, as bearers of the light of civilisation in a cold and barbarian world. When Charlemagne attempted to re-establish a cultured, civilised new western Roman Empire it was to the School of St Peter in York, the Cathedral School, that he went to get Alcuin to lead an intellectual renaissance. Northumbria, York, was once again bringing light in a dark and dangerous world. 

Of course Alcuin was not the first. It was the Roman Legion in York which proclaimed Constantine as Caesar, leading him to re-invigorate the Empire, to legalise Christianity, and to make a change to European civilisation which is almost beyond imagination. If he had not been chosen, Christianity may have faded in the west while in the east the Syriac Christianity of Persia was already spreading to China and India. Christianity would have been seen as an Eastern religion and who knows what would have happened in Europe as the Church withered. No Michaelangelo, Mozart or Bach.

And from the same Northumbria came the railways. Imagine Russia or India without them? British creativity is not just about art and culture and faith.

Britain then brought culture, education and civilization back to the rest of Europe in its darkest days. Just as by standing against totalitarianism this strange monarchical democracy in the last century stemmed the flow of Nazism.

I have spent a lot of my life living in other countries. They see Great Britain in many ways, not always affectionate ones. But they see that this is a country of great significance. Its significance has grown since it joined the EU because it has such clout as part of this great company of democracies. People look at this country and think of culture, education, of Shakespeare and the dynamism of the performing arts; the land from which many of the greatest and most inventive popular musicians have come, of engineering and technology. 

And those who want us to withdraw, who want their country back, what do they want? Nothing really except to go back to an imaginary past. Hogwarts and Enid Blyton maybe. Leave us alone, they say, let us get on with... well, with what?

So let us see the struggle for Europe as a noble and holy cause.

Whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. 

People look at Britain, and they see the country whose lawyers brought Human Rights to the heart of the civilised world. A country whose constitution is about fair trial and the rule of law in a country where no one was above judgement ads where judgement was to be public and accountable. 

We can whinge about the bureaucrats in Brussels, but we elect MEPs to hold them to account, and because UKIP was so persuasive they don't hold them to account, UKIP MEPs hardly attend meetings, do little scrutiny and prevent the democratic process from working. We should demand from our elected representatives that where they see stupidity they challenge it, and the rest of the time they inspire the struggling countries, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and so on; that they say: let us stand up for what us honourable, just, pure, commendable.  Let us stand up for universal virtues, and inspire the people and politicians across the Union that we can all make Europe, and the world, a better place, a place worthy of Constantine and Pericles, of Alcuin and Aristotle, of Newton and Einstein. 

We have so much to offer Europe, and our Europeans colleagues was us to make this contribution, It is time to stop this nonsense and be committed to a Europe of virtue, nobility and justice.

Lord, have mercy!

"Lord, have mercy."

It’s a little phrase which Christians seem to have used from the beginning: the humble tax-collector in Jesus’ parable says, ‘God have mercy on me a sinner.’ It is the natural response of someone who knows himself to the God who knows him even better. But I wonder what it really means?

One approach is to see it as, essentially, ‘Don’t hit me!’ It assumes that God is there to begin with to punish. But when the tax-collector says it to God in Jesus’ little story, I think it has a different meaning. The little invocation used widely in Islam, ‘In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful’ might help us, especially if we remember that this was probably taken from Christian usage by the first Muslims. The Arabic words are Rahman and Raheem. The root of both words is R-H-M, and it the word for womb. I like to think that this little invocation is ‘In the name of God, the womblike, the womblike.’ The womb is the place of nurturing, of security, and creation and creativity. SO when we turn to God aware of our shortcomings, when we say, ‘Lord, have mercy’ we are really saying ‘nurture and protect me, grant me the great virtues which are your will for me.’

As Charles Wesley wrote,

Other refuge have I none, hangs my helpless soul on Thee;

Leave, ah! leave me not alone, still support and comfort me.

All my trust on Thee is stayed, all my help from Thee I bring;

Cover my defenceless head with the shadow of Thy wing.

In eastern Christianity, ‘Lord, have mercy’ is not used in confession but in intercession, in prayer for others. The first time it occurs in the Eucharist in Orthodox Churches, as in Russia and Greece, is this:

Deacon:

In peace let us pray to the Lord.

People:

Lord, have mercy.

Deacon:

For the peace of God and the salvation of our souls, let us pray to the Lord.

People:

Lord, have mercy.

Deacon:

For peace of the whole world, for the stability of the holy churches of God, and for the unity of all, let us pray to the Lord.

People:

Lord, have mercy.

The deacon then lists such things are rulers, weather, this place, and tells the people to pray, and the response is to say, ‘Lord, have mercy.’ This opening litany was used in the west, but for some reason the deacon’s list of those for whom we should pray is removed and all that remains is Lord, have mercy. At some point they added, ‘Christ’ to this, and we have the very different little litany which is often found in the Eucharist and Morning and Evening Prayer. But it is ripped from the great prayer for everything and has no context.

In recent years (I think because choirs liked to sing settings of the Kyrie, eleison) this became attached to the Confession, adding a little bit extra when we had said that we have things for which we need forgiveness, and the Kyries, the Lord, have mercies, became penitential. It’s not a good idea. When the Confession is replaced by the Lord, have mercies just like the deacon’s prayers, our confession has disappeared and we have removed those powerful words, admitting that we have sinned in though, word and deed, and replaced with vague scriptural sentences which sound nice, but aren’t an admission of sin, so that we don’t bring to mind the things we have left undone, or the things we have done, and we get forgiven anyway. Cheap grace as someone once said.

Food and War in Syria

Until 2007, Syria stood out for its successful food policy. Improvements in dry land farming achieved through international assistance, state subsidies and centralized economic planning made the country self-sufficient in strategic products such as wheat. [i]

One of the contributing factors to the rebellion against the Syrian government was its disastrous economic policy, when Syria moved from an old-style Socialist model to an incompetently managed, corruptly administered economic liberalization. When faced with five years of severe drought the government was unable and unwilling to intervene when poor harvests and high production costs devastated the Syrian countryside. The rebellion consequently began in the country, starting in Dera’a and spreading to Raqqa and Hasaka which had suffered so badly.

Food, and in particular the supply of Arab bread, was a contributing factor and became a tool of war, first by the Syrian government and then by various opposition groups.

To begin with the army attacked food stocks, livestock and agricultural machinery, as well as irrigation systems so that by the end of 2014 Syria’s wheat production was 52% below the pre-rebellion average.

The next tactic was attacks on bakeries. For instance in the period from August 2012 to January 2013 there were 80 attacks on bakeries in rebel held areas of Aleppo.[ii] There are stories of besieged towns receiving flour and when the bakery opens, for the bakery to be shelled, with significant human loss.

The Syrian government then attacked the crops as they grew. Different news sources report the burning of fields in Deir ez-Zor, Hama, Homs and in the oasis (the Ghouta) of Damascus.

It is not only the Syrian government which has perpetrated these crimes. ISIS took control of the Siyassiyah bridge into Deir ez-Zor which cut imports into government areas and caused process to rise dramatically.

With publicity from Madaya, the tactic of siege has come to public attention recently. This is no new policy. The Palestinian area of Yarmouk in the suburbs of Damascus underwent a dramatic siege. A busy residential area of about 160,000 people, it was the scene of inter-factional fighting early in the unrest when pro-government militants killed 14 protesters. FSA forces supported the anti-government Palestinians in December 2012 and expelled loyalist Palestinians from the PFLP. Yarmouk became a solidly anti-government area in Damascus, and the base for rocket attacks into the city. The government immediately surrounded the suburb and cut off supplies. By February 2014 nearly 100 residents had died of starvation.[iii] The rebels were forced by this into negotiations with the government and were expelled. The government’s name for the operation was ’Starvation until Submission.’ It is a medieval tactic without the clear medieval rules of war. It is a policy aimed at breaking the will of the population in a rebel controlled area, for we must remember that in all these urban battlegrounds the residents have no say in who governs them. In Homs, for instance, scene of the huge anti-government demonstrations at the beginning of the uprising, following the siege, committed activists described the collapse of the will to rebel,

I was inside the siege until not long ago. As I see it, the departure of the remaining young men from Homs will limit the revolution in liberated areas. Frankly speaking, what I have seen since leaving the siege is that Homs’s civilians have begun to distance themselves from the revolutionary mind-set; they are now simply trying to live, nothing more. This means that public support for the revolution in Homs is very weak.[iv]

A recent article by Martinez and Eng[v] points to the complexity of the response to these various food-based policies.  Although humanitarian organisations are generally committed to neutrality, they are by their methods of bringing supplies inadvertently supporting the government. In most cases food aid has to be permitted through the Syrian government, or the Syrian Arab Red Crescent.

As it is, in general food supplied by UN agencies and other programmes working to relieve starvation separate people who are in opposition to the powerful (the opposition in government-controlled areas, pro-government people in rebel areas) from the political situation. People are treated as victims of an emergency (as though this were a natural and sudden catastrophe), and the causes of their starvation are ignored. The agencies seek to alleviate hunger, but can only do so by co-operating with the local powers.

The wartime government can reduce expenditures on food distribution and other provisionary duties at the heart of its prewar social pact with Syrian society, focusing its funds instead on military efforts. This helps the Assad regime assuage popular discontent that might otherwise translate into unrest. This prospect was made evident in violent protests against fuel, food and electricity shortages in the regime-controlled city of Latakia in late 2014.[vi]

While the government is essential to the UN functioning, David Milliband is quoted by Martinez and Eng, as saying, ‘TheFood and War in Syria

Until 2007, Syria stood out for its successful food policy. Improvements in dry land farming achieved through international assistance, state subsidies and centralized economic planning made the country self-sufficient in strategic products such as wheat. [i]

One of the contributing factors to the rebellion against the Syrian government was its disastrous economic policy, when Syria moved from an old-style Socialist model to an incompetently managed, corruptly administered economic liberalization. When faced with five years of severe drought the government was unable and unwilling to intervene when poor harvests and high production costs devastated the Syrian countryside. The rebellion consequently began in the country, starting in Dera’a and spreading to Raqqa and Hasaka which had suffered so badly.

Food, and in particular the supply of Arab bread, was a contributing factor and became a tool of war, first by the Syrian government and then by various opposition groups.

To begin with the army attacked food stocks, livestock and agricultural machinery, as well as irrigation systems so that by the end of 2014 Syria’s wheat production was 52% below the pre-rebellion average.

The next tactic was attacks on bakeries. For instance in the period from August 2012 to January 2013 there were 80 attacks on bakeries in rebel held areas of Aleppo.[ii] There are stories of besieged towns receiving flour and when the bakery opens, for the bakery to be shelled, with significant human loss.

The Syrian government then attacked the crops as they grew. Different news sources report the burning of fields in Deir ez-Zor, Hama, Homs and in the oasis (the Ghouta) of Damascus.

It is not only the Syrian government which has perpetrated these crimes. ISIS took control of the Siyassiyah bridge into Deir ez-Zor which cut imports into government areas and caused process to rise dramatically.

With publicity from Madaya, the tactic of siege has come to public attention recently. This is no new policy. The Palestinian area of Yarmouk in the suburbs of Damascus underwent a dramatic siege. A busy residential area of about 160,000 people, it was the scene of inter-factional fighting early in the unrest when pro-government militants killed 14 protesters. FSA forces supported the anti-government Palestinians in December 2012 and expelled loyalist Palestinians from the PFLP. Yarmouk became a solidly anti-government area in Damascus, and the base for rocket attacks into the city. The government immediately surrounded the suburb and cut off supplies. By February 2014 nearly 100 residents had died of starvation.[iii] The rebels were forced by this into negotiations with the government and were expelled. The government’s name for the operation was ’Starvation until Submission.’ It is a medieval tactic without the clear medieval rules of war. It is a policy aimed at breaking the will of the population in a rebel controlled area, for we must remember that in all these urban battlegrounds the residents have no say in who governs them. In Homs, for instance, scene of the huge anti-government demonstrations at the beginning of the uprising, following the siege, committed activists described the collapse of the will to rebel,

I was inside the siege until not long ago. As I see it, the departure of the remaining young men from Homs will limit the revolution in liberated areas. Frankly speaking, what I have seen since leaving the siege is that Homs’s civilians have begun to distance themselves from the revolutionary mind-set; they are now simply trying to live, nothing more. This means that public support for the revolution in Homs is very weak.[iv]

A recent article by Martinez and Eng[v] points to the complexity of the response to these various food-based policies.  Although humanitarian organisations are generally committed to neutrality, they are by their methods of bringing supplies inadvertently supporting the government. In most cases food aid has to be permitted through the Syrian government, or the Syrian Arab Red Crescent.

As it is, in general food supplied by UN agencies and other programmes working to relieve starvation separate people who are in opposition to the powerful (the opposition in government-controlled areas, pro-government people in rebel areas) from the political situation. People are treated as victims of an emergency (as though this were a natural and sudden catastrophe), and the causes of their starvation are ignored. The agencies seek to alleviate hunger, but can only do so by co-operating with the local powers.

The wartime government can reduce expenditures on food distribution and other provisionary duties at the heart of its prewar social pact with Syrian society, focusing its funds instead on military efforts. This helps the Assad regime assuage popular discontent that might otherwise translate into unrest. This prospect was made evident in violent protests against fuel, food and electricity shortages in the regime-controlled city of Latakia in late 2014.[vi]

While the government is essential to the UN functioning, David Milliband is quoted by Martinez and Eng, as saying, ‘The Assad regime can’t afford to kick the UN out of Damascus. The UN is feeding so many of [Assad’s] own people.’[vii] Innocent civilians, including those who supported the demonstrations of 2011, fled to the government held coastal area in order to survive, and places like Dera’a cannot receive IRC aid because the government will not permit it. In Tartous, a government stronghold, there is a well-developed programme for the relief of need, so that ‘neutral aid’ bolster’s the impression of the government’s legitimacy, while the rebels are unable to feed their own, and see their position eroded. There is no doubt that aid in the form of food supplies is an effective weapon on the government’s side. For decades the Syrian government has ensured acquiescence rather than loyalty.

Food is a complex issue in the Syrian conflict. Seen by humanitarian organisations as politically neutral, it effectively undermines all those seeking a just and equitable society; and unequal distribution means that the powerful state uses food aid as a tool in ensuring acquiescence by the war-weary population. The origins of the Arab Spring, of Syrian popular discontent, of the rebellion and attempted revolution are of course the complex and oppressive ways in which the Assads enforced popular acquiescence to their corrupt kleptocratic and torturing rule. The very attempts to alleviate the hunger of the population has been turned to the government’s advantage.

---

[i] Starvation, Submission and Survival Syria's War Through the Prism of Food. Eng and Martinez Middle East Report. Winter2014, Issue 273, p28-32. 5p.

[ii] McClatchy January 21, 2013

[iii] Daily Star, Feb 18, 2014

[iv] http://syriadirect.org/news/activist-revolutionary-spirit-in-homs-%E2%80%98very-weak%E2%80%99/

[v] The unintended consequences of emergency food aid: neutrality, sovereignty and politics in the Syrian civil war, 2012–15 Martinez and Eng International Affairs January 2016, Volume 92, Number 1

- See more at: https://www.chathamhouse.org/publication/ia/unintended-consequences-emergency-food-aid-neutrality-sovereignty-and-politics-syrian#sthash.eldB5nbI.dpuf

[vi] Martinez and Eng 2016

[vii] Lynch, ‘UN’s fear of angering Assad’ FP 30 Dec 2014