Culture, guilt, and Lockerbie

Local news today is full of the debate over whether Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, should be freed on compassionate grounds. He is dying of cancer, and my understanding is that it would be normal practice in Britain to allow any prisoner who is terminally ill to die at home (indeed, another very high-profile convict, Ronnie Biggs, was freed on such grounds just last week).

His crime, of course, affected families and the wider community in the USA as much as in Britain. The news reports I have heard suggest that the notion that he might be freed is being greeted with simple incredulity in the USA. The breadth of condemnation from across the Atlantic is striking: it is not confined to (families of) victims, or to social conservatives, but seems to be almost universal (Democratic senators have intervened publicly, and Hilary Clinton has been reported to have been involved).

Is Britain – specifically in this case Scotland – just more liberal than the USA? Actually, probably it is, but I don’t think that this is the reason for the divide in this case. Rather, our understandings of what words like ‘guilt’ and ‘justice’ mean are culturally-determined, and somewhat different. To us, dying in prison seems a cruel and unusual punishment, and so essentially unjust; it seems that the default assumption in the USA is that sentences should be served, and so that any relaxation is unjust.

My own instincts are, unsurprisingly, fairly straightforwardly British. Is this right or wrong? I don’t know; being exposed to different cultural understandings at least allows me to ask the question, though, rather than simply assuming that what I have grown up with must be right.

What is the theological point here? Simply this: words like ‘guilt’ and ‘justice’ are rather central to at least some accounts of the atonement (‘justice’ has wider theological application, of course, not least in theology proper and in discussions of providence). It is rather easy to use these words assuming that we all agree what they mean. We don’t, and if we are to understand each other’s attempts to speak adequately of the salvation of Christ, we need to realise that, and to be sensitive to it.

Chris Moyles’s commentary on charismatic worship

For those who don’t know, Chris Moyles is the most popular radio presenter in Britain; his morning show, on BBC Radio 1 (essentially a mainstream pop music station), attracts approaching 8m listeners. This video contains an extract from his show dubbed over the TV broadcast – of baptisms in a church in Peterborough – that they are discussing in the extract.

Four things strike me about the comments, considered as useful data for missional concern in the UK:
1. Moyles (who is 35) and his posse belong to a generation that is no longer reflexively cynical about church. Britain, and Europe, is often described as ‘post-Christian,’ but this phrase can mean two very different things, or so it seems to me. A culture can be ‘post-Christian’ in the sense that it has consciously turned away from its historic commitment to Christianity. Church is inevitably then regarded as comical, outdated, irrelevant. Or a culture can be ‘post-Christian’ in the sense that it has lost any memory of ever having been Christian. Church is then alien, but at least potentially interesting. I grew up with the tail-end of the former concept; Moyles, four years younger (and a lot more culturally current…), seems firmly in the latter. Across the country, I suspect Moyles’s attitude is common in urban and suburban areas, and more widely in SE England; here in rural Scotland, we are a bit behind the times on this one.
2. The clip also demonstrates the lack of even basic knowledge concerning Christianity that younger generations in Britain now have. This is a missional issue – the Alpha course, for instance, assumes a significant level of cultural Christian understanding in its teaching material.
3. What is it that Moyles found attractive about this church service? Two things, it seems to me. Obviously, enthusiasm, commitment, engagement was important – ‘I’ve been to gigs with less atmosphere’. The church presented itself as vibrant and exciting, and this is in itself attractive.
4. The second attraction, though, was the professionalism of the performance: ‘they had a proper perspex cage around the drum kit and everything…’ They were doing what they did well. No peeling paint, no worn carpets – and you just know that the after-service drinks were not served in institutional green tea-cups!

The Pope at New Year

According to the news reports (see here and here for example) Pope Benedict used a new year’s message to the Curia to offer a swingeing and trenchent critique of the acceptance of homosexuality. LGBT groups were predictably outraged, and newspaper leaders were condemning of his outdated attitudes and his decision to focus on this subject at Christmas. A simple and predictable story, with only one little problem…

It’s not true. Not even close.

You can read the full text of the Pope’s speech, in the original Italian or in English translation, here. If you do, you will discover that he never mentioned homosexuality. Not once. He offered a review of the good things that had happened over the past year – lots on the Bible; a discussion of how he doesn’t like the media presentation of his Youth Rallies as like rock festivals with him as the star; and four reflections on pneumatology. One of these considered the Spirit as creator, and so discussed Christian faith concerning creation.

In this paragraph (so, we are now looking at one part of one of four paragraphs under one of several heads of the speech) there were some comments about human sexuality. He made the rather standard point that human sexuality is a part of the created order, and so finds its proper expression in certain channels. He did, entirely in passing, criticise ‘gender theory’ by which he meant, I presume (remember, he is a major league intellectual, fully at home in the current world of the European university) the academic discourse which tries to separate socially-constructed gender from biologically-determined gender. He accused this tradition of undermining the created reality of humanity as male and female.

OK, this could be taken as a swipe at the transgendered community, if you really want to read something pointed into it. There is no way his words can be interpreted as suggesting that gay and lesbian relationships are an affront to the created order. I’m sure he believes that, but he didn’t say it in this speech. This was the context of the comparison with protection of the rainforests – it had nothing, nothing at all, to do with homosexuality. It just didn’t.

He goes on to commend marriage, but the context is a rejection of human sexuality as a commodity to be used. The emphasis is on the indissolubility of marriage, not on its heterosexual nature.

If you want an academic lesson, it’s about the importance of primary sources…