Tony Campolo interview

I’ve just posted an interview I did a few months ago with Tony Campolo.

Click here to read it.

In it, he discusses (unsurprisingly) how ‘Red Letter Christians’ can change the world through politics.

He also discusses: death; Islam; making a fool of God and how he feels about the harsh criticism he’s received.

Fascinating guy, is Tony. If you’re wondering about what real Christian attitudes to politics might be, but are afraid of crazies or heretics, this is a safe and  good place to start — and you may find him more challenging than you anticipate.

I may post the video here at some point (or point you to where it does get posted).

Phelps: a foxy fundamentalist

That Fred Phelps is a sexy, sexy man. I mean has got it going on. I’m not usually one for the older generation and I am actually straight and married (to a girl), but in other circumstances I could see myself making an exception for Pastor Fred of Westboro Baptist Church in the US of A.

Now why, you ask, would a respectable Baptist Times columnist like me say such a thing? Well, Pastor Fred’s church is the one that owns websites like (and I swear I’m not making this up): www.godhatesfags.com. They are not very open to alternative lifestyles (or, judging by the documentary, Jewish people), and I thought perhaps if a handsome guy like me made advances towards the good pastor… Well, it was probably a silly idea.

But then, the documentary was broadcast on April Fool’s Day last week. In fact, as I checked out some of Westboro BC’s websites on Sunday morning to fore-arm myself against a possible anti-Christian Theroux stitch-up, part of me thought: this is a hoax. It has to be. I mean, who picket’s a dead soldier’s funeral because ‘he died fighting to protect a fag nation’? Who labels everyone from Princess Diana to Desmond Tutu and George Bush with the deeply offensive epiphet ‘fag’? And even if you can find those people morally lacking, who (and again I’m not kidding) says that Billy Graham is on his way straight to hell? Billy Graham!

Westboro BC’s websites are the same calibre of shocking and unlikely as other great hoaxes like the now legendary www.bonsaikitten.com (the original bonsai kitten site has been retired but lives on here — though i must point out that not eveyone finds this hoax funny). And bear in mind I had also just read that Google was offering broadband via fibre-optic cables that you flush down your toilet (complete with a graphic of a technician in scuba-gear) and that members of violently anti-Christian heavy-metal band Slayer were forming a Gospel group. Plus, I saw many newspapers and sites juxtaposing calls for British sailors in Iran to be released after a few days next to reports of a man who has been released from Guantanemo after four years—who nobody shouted much for at all (this ironic hilarity turned out to be real news actually—go figure).

But, slap me sideways with a slab of something starting with ‘s’ if, at 9pm on BBC2 the documentary came on and apparently they’re real. And on the internet they were big news. One message-board comment ended: ‘the only trouble with Baptist is — they don’t hold them under long enough’. Charming. Site after site, bloggers and quick-on-the-draw journalists were all joining in the denunciations. And I had to agree. Preaching hate when you do little or nothing to tell people how they might be saved, when you fail to mention Jesus Christ or his atoning death on the cross does neither Christians nor heathens any good. Failing to show Christ’s love, even if you are (sort of) preaching part of his truth is not just sinful, it’s inefficient. Bad theology, Christianity without Grace, fundamentalism without the fun – are all bad ideas.

But before we slap ourselves on the back let’s remember that much of what the documentary focused on was not the reasons why but the fact that the cult believed that some people go to hell at all, that some lifestyles are sinful, that some truth is absolute. And that should make many orthodox Christians just a little nervous. Media reaction to Phelps should prompt us not just to examine our own theologies and approaches to those we consider sinful but to be aware that at the core of our beliefs, beneath all our politeness, are unpalatable truths and people may hate us one day too.

Doh news is good news

Praise the Lord for stupidity. Yes I know foolishness is denounced in the Proverbs, but you’ve got to admit, for sheer entertainment value, foolishness trumps wisdom every time.  In a week of bad news (Bob Mugabe, knifings, the ever-worsening situation in Iraq, miners trapped in explosions, and on and on) one needs the occasional ‘doh!’ factor or good news story to give one the will to carry on reading the papers.

An exhibition in Tokyo, for instance lost 1.7 million dollars worth of gold bullion to thieves last week. The bandits’ cunning strategy for nicking the shiny stuff? Walk in, grab it and drag it to the car. The exhibition (which members of the public were encouraged to touch) was apparently protected, Fort Knox style, by one security guard and a CCTV camera. A spokesperson said that the reason for the low security was so that people could experience ‘what gold feels like’. Which, I imagine if you’re a bullion robber is ‘pretty darn good’.

In other amusing news of a more specifically evangelical nature, the President of a seminary in the United States has managed to get gay-rights activists and Southern Baptists to side with each other in their condemnation of him. Unfortunate references to certain political issues making ‘strange bedfellows’ aside, Rev R. Albert Mohler Jr, president of the leading Southern Baptist Seminary, has incurred the wrath of both left and right in talking about unborn gay babies. He first asserted that research suggested that homosexuality may have certain biological causes, thereby angering conservatives who believe in the possibility of ‘curing’ homosexuality through counselling. But before the gay-rights lobbyists even had time to reach for the rainbow party poppers, he then suggested that ‘treating’ gay babies in the womb to cure their biological predisposition would be biblically justifiable. He can’t have been entirely surprised when those sentiments received a teensy bit of criticism, not least because evangelicals are traditionally squeamish about interfering with unborn babies, whatever their sexual orientation.

That rather odd news is closely rivalled (if only because it actually made the news at all) by the story of the death of a much-loved parishioner who attended Lam United Methodist church in Michigan. Not terribly hilarious at first glance, I’ll admit, but when you learn that the parishioner in question was a turkey that used to attack children and chase cars (though like so many of us recalcitrant churchgoers, never missed a service) that ended up as roadkill. Religious news: it’s serious, it’s important and you cannot make it up.

In no way silly or stupid but guaranteed to make many people smile, is the news that the USA’s National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) endorsed a statement last week saying, in short, that torture is not an acceptable option in the war on terror. The 18-page document was drafted by Evangelicals for Human Rights and was prompted by incidents such as the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison. American mainstream evangelicalism seems to be catching up to UK Christian levels of moral social consciousness and though the report is apparently flawed by the absence of a definition of what actually constitutes torture, I think most Christians will welcome any move that frees us from the need to explain and excuse the actions of our US brothers and sisters. With that out of the way we can get down to the important business of working out the best way to talk a foetus out of its gayness. Either that or prepare ourselves for another all-too-serious week in the news.

(This column appears in the latest Baptist Times and replaces the original column I wrote about Bob Mugabe, which was deemed too divergent from the paper’s own stand to be published. Those who know me can find the original under ‘Bob Mugabe for Pope’ in the Blog section of my myspace account. Go on. make yourself feel dirty.)

Loving the otter

It has begun. A great threat to our liberty, our freedom of expression and our very lives has taken its first slouching steps towards Bethlehem, as I’m sure Yeats would put it if he were alive today (actually, if he were alive today he would probably say “help, help, I’m stuck in this tiny box,” but you get what I mean). One terrifying headline said it all: “Otters on the rampage”.

That was the front page of last week’s Angling Times. So let’s talk about otters; their effect on the environment, their razor-sharp claws and powerful fangs; their beady little eyes… Oh, I’m sorry… It’s not the otters you’re afraid of? You’re worried about the gays on the rampage, about the sexual discrimination law that survived possible rejection by the House of Lords last week. Right.

Some Christians fear that, because of it, Christian B&B owners who wish to refuse entry to gay couples intending on sharing a bed will not be allowed to do so. But why would they want to prohibit it? As many secular commentators have pointed out, heterosexual couples without a valid marriage license (or even learner’s license) are not often similarly restricted. More than that, doesn’t it become very complicated? I mean, how do you tell if a couple are gay or just good mates? What if they themselves are not sure? What if they are not gay, but what the magazines call “bi-curious” do you let them in but only offer them a twin (room, I mean)? And why stop there? I say only serve born-again Christians. Determining whether they’re saved? Easily solved. Ask your local Christian Students Union for some of their membership application forms—they won’t need them soon.

Despite the fact that no-one would try to defend similar freedoms for people who object to black people for instance, I feel for the Christian B&B owners (they must make up a significant demographic to warrant so much attention— accommodation at this year’s Baptist Assembly is going to be a doddle). Don’t get me wrong, I don’t buy their arguments, but when you read some of the press about the issue from last week, like this from a Guardian columnist describing the effects of religion: “books being burned, people being murdered, discrimination being preached, demands that my tax money should go to the brainwashing of young children, and so wretchedly on and on,” perhaps you can cut our brothers and sisters some slack for being a teensy bit paranoid that every new law is a new way to get us. But let’s stay focused. Yes, this is more about people making a point about religious people’s attitudes than actual persecution or even inconvenience. And yes, our society does trivialise religious conviction. And it does and will increasingly pressure people to choose secular humanist values over religious ones and call it tolerance and inclusivity. But we need to choose our battles.

Denying entry to a group of people we have decided are more significantly sinful than the rest of humanity is not going to bring them any closer to getting saved. It is certainly not going to protect our religious freedom, since it has little to do with it. When our society starts actually forcing us to change what we may preach (and I suspect that time is coming) then we can either shout about and fight it or take our punishment meekly and uncompromisingly as so many martyrs before us have done. Until then, perhaps we need to look at why so many people hate us, perhaps appropriating that phrase common to both gay and straight relationships: “it’s not you, it’s me”.