Movement 99

AIDS AND THE CHURCH . THE CULF CRISIS . lN 

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lssue 99 o Spring 1998 

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MORE TEA FATHER? 

So long to Father Ted 

and his friends 

THE MYSTERIES 

Behind the scenes at the 

RSC's radical retelling of 

the Gospel 

getting beyond 

he 

on 

academic debat 

legalising cannabis 

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The recent death of Dermot Morgan also brought an end to an enduring comic creation, 

Father Ted. Terry Orsett offers a tribute 

Fathe? Ted YYe 

, 

Hardly Knew Ye 

l^ : : :fl?'; J,T:: iit,.l"" Ini,".," 

I delav the premiere of the 

V current series of Father Ted bv 

one week. lt was a decision that was, 

for all its good intentions, completely 

wrong. 

I suppose it was thought to be in 

bad taste to show it-in the same way 

that planners regularly postpone 

episodes of London's Burning because 

there happened to be a fire in that 

week's episode which resembled the 

one in Woking the previous Thursday. 

But what none of these people think 

about is how cathartic laughter is. And 

Father Zed is especially cathartic, 

because it's especially funny. lt would 

have been a fitting testament to Dermot 

Morgan, who in his portrayal of Father 

Ted has created one of this generation's 

most enduring comic creations, not to 

have postponed airing the current series. 

It could have been a sort of televisual 

wake. 

I was first introduced to Father Ted 

and his fellow denizens of the Craggy 

lsland parochial house by friends who 

were atheists. For them, the scheming 

but incompetent Father Ted, the clueless 

but sweet Father Dougal, and the 

catatonic but lascivious Father Jack 

took the mickey out of the authoritarian 

Catholic structure they grew up with. 

But it's not only those who are secular 

who erupt into riotous laughter. Some of 

the ir,ost devoted fans of the series l've 

encountered are the Clergy themselves. 

Ithink that is'the brilliance of Father 

Ted. lt's a comedy about the church 

where people on the inside and the 

outside of the institution can have a 

good laugh at it. 

Father Ted's creators, Graham 

Linehan and Arthur Matthews, have 

gone to extraordinary lengths not to 

offend people, far more than I think they 

needed to. Ted and Dougal are never 

seen conducting Mass or visitationseven 

conversation about their priestly 

functions are limited to a few isolated 

instances here and there. For Linehan 

and Matthews, the comedy is about a 

bunch of inept people with lots of time 

on their hands. 

Which is somewhat misleading, 

because these people with time on their 

hands are priests, 

and the priesthood in 

Father Ted is 

populated by people 

who are. frankly, not 

that bright. They are people 

like Ted, who are in an arrested 

state of adolescence (or, like 

Dougal, never even got that 

far). lt's sad but people like 

Ted exist and they became 

priests because, probably 

like Ted. they couldn't 

get a date while in 

school (with either 

gender) and they 

found a profession 

where not much is 

really required of 

them. ln this respect, 

Father led is perhaps 

more subversive than 

Jimmy McGovern's 

Priest: it's one thing 

to expose an institution 

for its cruelty; 

it's another to 

expose the incompetence 

which masks 

itself behind virtue 

and piety on a 

regular basis. 

Even so, there's 

another level to 

appreciating Father 

Ied which isn't 

discussed as much. For it's not just a 

comedy about authority figures, it's a 

comedy about being Christian. I think 

most of us, if we really searched our 

hearts, would find that we blunder 

through our lives and the moral conundrums 

as Ted does: our lies snowball on 

us. We are not as devout or as moral as 

we pretend to be. At the end of the day 

there's a lot of shrieking and praying 

and even when we win, it's a pyrrhic 

victory at best. 

My favourite episode o't Father Ted 

embodies some of these 

aspects. lt's the one 

where Ted and Dougal 

make an lrish Eurovision 

entry. Ted, unable to come 

up with a melody to 

gal's lyrics 

(about 

tune of an obscure Swedish song from 

the seventies only to discover the same 

song being played in the lift on the 

night of his performance. He ends up 

because the judges 

want the lrish entry 

to fail at Eurovision 

And 

that's why 

Father Ted is 

going to 

be 

missed 

'inmy 

Iife 

from 

now on: 

l'm going to 

miss the man wearing 

the collar of moral 

authority who regularly proves that 

he's no more or less incompetent than 

I am at getting out of the moral pits 

we dig ourselves into. Father Ted 

wasn't just about laughing at the 

church; it was about laughing at 

ourselves. E 

Terry Orsett is a writer in London 

movgment 1

fnovefnGnt 

no 98 

spring 1998 

movement is the termlY 

magazine of the 

Student Christian 

Movement, distributed 

free of charge to members 

and dedicated to 

an open-minded exploration 

of Christianity 

editorial address 

PO Box 1 6735 

London E'l 4 6SN 

tel: 0958 730381 

MovemntSCM@aol.com 

SCM central office 

Westhill Cgllege 

14l15 Weoley Park Rd 

Selly Oak 

Birmingham 829 6LL 

tel: 0121 471 2404 

fax: O1 21 414 1251 

SCM@charis.co. uk 

editor 

Graeme Burk 

editorial assistant 

Carrie O'Grady 

editorial board 

Tim Woodcock 

Kate Wilson 

lrfan Merchant 

Craig Cooling 

Stephen Matthews 

disclaimer 

The views expressed in 

movement are those of 

the particular author 

and should not be taken 

to be the policy of the 

Student Christian 

Movement 

SCM staff 

Coordinator 

Carolyn Clayton 

Project Worker - GrouPs 

Craig Cooling 

Project Worker - 

Mem bership Danelopment 

Stephen Matthews 

membership fees 

tl5 (waged) 

f 10 (unwaged/students) 

next copydate 

25th Junel 998 

rssN 0306-980X 

Charity No 241896 

o1 

998 SCM 

A Tale of Two Conferences 

This year's scottish scM conference and our annual Joint conference were great 

successes, report James chedworth and Tim woodcock 

Scottish SCM Conference 

clasgow 

13th-15th February 1998 

t\ I :l; 11,', l,-J":il:il'"' 

I \l ,n", can ertner wetcome 

or shun people...offer two 

arms or two fingers-and 

there is nowhere more interesting 

and upbeat as Scotland 

at the moment. 

ldentity is something that, 

try as you might, cannot be 

forged alone. Twenty or so 

SCMers (idealists. cYnics and 

drifters) came together to 

discuss such matters. lt was 

directed inspirationallY bY 

Brian Hardy (a sPrightlY Priest 

who was rather like the angel 

Clarence from lt's A 

Wonderful Lifel 

-and ranged 

Lesslie 

Newbigin: 

I go9- I 998 

1-his past February marked the passing 

I of an old friend of SCM. Bishop Lesslie 

I Newbigin was one of Britain's leading 

ecumenists whose varied career included 

work in Madras and lndia' He was a tireless 

proponent for Christian unity, and authored a 

number of books on the subject. Often he 

worked with the World Council of Churches' 

an organisation which he was associate 

general secretary of for a time. 

Bishop Newbigin accredited his commitment 

to ecumenism-and indeed 

Christianity-to his days in the Cambridge 

SCM, and commented on this in an interview 

in Movement in 1986: 

"As a student in my first year at college I 

was both welcomed and challenged by a 

loosely knit group of fellow-students who 

were willing to take me as I was, to take my 

questions seriously, and who in many 

different ways commended me to a faith 

which was bigger than any of the denominational 

expressions of it. 

"We still need the SCM. We can't do 

without it. lf the Christian faith is to find 

authentic expression in the specific circumsances 

of a student community...it needs to 

be a student movement, not an organisation 

/or students. 

from the parochial to the 

mind-bogglingly international. 

The sentimental to the 

dynamic. 

Light relief cam from 

indoor football, walks in the 

rain, flag-painting. trying to 

keep the alcoholics we were 

sharing the building with 

anonymous, and Emily's keyring 

torch. The latter was also 

a source of frustration for 

those of us who needed 

sleep. 

Although sometimes 

circular the topic threw uP a 

number of memorable 

thoughts such as: "nationality 

is where we've come from; 

faith is where we're going." 

We all left a bit more 

gemmed-up. And a bit more 

mixed-up. 

Joint Conference 

Birmingham 

19th-21st FebruarY 1998 

tt iving on aPraYer" 

-- I was the theme of 

l-this year's 

Conference with MethSoc and 

the Catholic Students 

Association, lt was one of the 

most successful conferences 

in recent memory, with an 

impressive turnout of 

students-including a contingent 

of Western EuroPeans 

who got lost trYing to find 

Edgbaston late FridaY evening 

The highlights included the 

service on SundaY and indeed 

the worship throughout, the 

food. the art workshoP and 

especially the Celidh on 

Saturday night! 

movsmont 2 

li I

Say Hello To Carolynl 

SCM has just welcomed a 

new staff member in the form 

of Carolyn Clayion (pictured 

here with feline friend 

Tiggeil. Carolyn began her 

new role as SCM Coordinator 

in April. 

ln what is now become 

something of a tradition, 

We've asked Carolyn to say a 

few words about herself... 

I I elloool Mv name is 

H Carotyn ano I have just 

I I join"i scM as the new 

Project Worker (Coordinator) 

which basically means I'm in 

charge of keeping things 

ticking over at Central Office 

and making sure we don't 

spend too much money! 

However I will also get the 

chance to travel a bit with 

Craig and Stephen and meet 

as many SCMers as we can 

manage. 

l'm 23 years old and 

graducated from Hull 

University last July with a 

degree in History and ltalian, 

with a particular emphasis 

on History of Art. I enjoyed 

the variety of a joint degree 

which gave me the chance 

to dip into many different 

subject areas and therefore 

gain a wider picture 

of how the world in which 

we live came to be as it 

is. Unfortunately part of 

my course involved 

having to go to ltaly for 

a year (sobl) where I 

was forced to spend 

hours sitting in 

pavement cafes 

drinking cappuccino 

and calling it work...l haven't 

recovered yet. 

Spiritually I started to 

think about faith issues 

whilst in Sixth Form. This 

t- 

14-16 June 

SCM SUMMER RETREAT 

Bath 

Contact: Craig Cooling 

SCM, Westhill College 



0121 471 2404 

SCM@charis.co.uk 

L 

28 JulV-7 August 

EUROPEAN ECUMENICAL 

YOUTH GATHERING 

WiHhaus, Switzerland 

Theme: Open Your Doors 

Contact: WSCF Europe, Prins 

Hendriklaan 37, NL-1075 BA 

Amsterdam, Netherlands 

+31 20 675 4921 

11-13 September 

TRAINING PROGRAMME 

WEEKEND 

Bimingham (TBC) 

Ever wanted to start an SCM 

group? This event will focus on 

issues around groupwork-facilitating 

groups, how to form and run your 

own SCM group. lf you are interested 

in running workshops (possibly at 

another group near you) or if you 

will be running a group next year or 

movelnent 3 

was the beginning of a 

journey that has taken me 

through significant involvement 

in the 

Anglican Chaplaincy at Uni, a 

CMS Experience Camp to 

Romania, two pilgrimages to 

lona and seven months as the 

Lay Assistant to the 

University of the West of 

England in Bristol. I enjoy a 

wide variety of worship styles 

but am reluctant to tie myself 

down to any one. I am more 

interested in what we do 

with our beliefs and how they 

affect the way we live, 

breathe and have our being. 

Just at the moment I am 

busy finding my feet at SCM 

but my long-term aims 

involve trying to develop links 

with organisations with 

similar views to see if we can 

learn from and assist one 

another. I also want to try 

and extend the circulation of 

SCM resources and generally 

heighten awareness of the 

movement, what we stand 

for and what we do. I can't 

wait to start and look forward 

to meeting you all and 

hearing what you have to say. 

if you just find it interesting and 

want to come along then this is the 

event for you. 

Contact: Craig Cooling 


14115 Weoley Park Rd 


0121 471 2404 


Late November 

SCM ANNUAL CONFERENCE 

Location: TBA 

Theme: Displacement & Deviance 

Contact; Craig Cooling 




0121 471 2404 


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what happens when personal choice clashes with the law? You can campaign, or vou can 

ignore the law completely and carry on regardless. This is the route William Straw chose when 

h-b sold cannabis to'a reporter. colin Mason takes us through the moral and ethical haze-- 

Smoke Gets 

ln Our Yes 

Pftj,fil;tr'"*iil,i;"'l,i*]- 

the 'Formula One affair' and the foreign 

secretary's infidelity has been unimpressive. 

Another embarrassment for the 

government was the story of Jack 

Straw's son's arrest for suPPlYing 

cannabis. The issue of decriminalising 

cannabis had become a live issue again 

thanks mainly to a campaign launched 

by The lndependent on SundaY 

newspaper. This I feel is an important 

campaign which needs strong 

consideration. 

Drawing lines in the sand is 

something we have to do as individuals. 

Our everyday lives involve risk to 

varying degrees. So it is necessary to 

weigh up the consequences and their 

possible effects on other people and 

ourselves. However, this is also a collective 

responsibility and one of the main 

functions of law. and there is great 

potential for conflict between these two 

decision making processes. 

Smoking tobacco and drinking 

alcohol are activities which involve 

potentially high degrees of risk. Tar in 

cigarettes is directly responsible for lung 

canQer and ultimately death. Passive 

smoking extends the risk to other 

people. Alcohol las its own dangers and 

is responsible for thousands of deaths 

from traffic accidents each year. These 

facts are well known and accepted by 

most people but tobacco and alcohol 

are still widely available and will 

continue to be so. There are restrictions 

(and taxes) but each person must make 

their own assessment and decision' 

The same cannot be said of beef on 

the bone. There is a minute risk of 

contracting the fatal disease CJD from 

eating this. lt is now illegal to buy it. 

Unpasteurised milk has also met this 

fate in Scotland and was seriously at 

risk of being banned in the rest of 

Britain. These were seen by many to be 

further examples of the 

'nanny state' interfering with 

personal choice. 

What happens when the 

personal assessment clashes 

with the law? The law 

draws lines in the sand but 

these may be moved through 

campaigns and changes in 

attitudes. Another possibilitY 

is to ignore the law 

completely and carrY on 

regardless. This is the route 

William Straw chose when 

he sold cannabis to a 

reporter (much to the 

consternation of his father 

Jack, the Home Secretary). 

The case of cannabis, a 

controlled class C drug, is a 

good example of this conflict 

and also of how camPaigns 

to change the law work. 

The campaign to decriminalise 

cannabis has been 

given fresh impetus in recent 

months by The lndePendent 

on Sunday's coverage. This 

has in turn provoked 

reactionary items from more 

conservative newsPaPers and 

a week of programmes on 

Radio 1 (interestingly, but not 

surprisingly, the I n depen dent 

did not support its sister 

newspaper's campaign). 

Publicity was also generated 

by the William Straw case 

and the alleged suppression 

of a World Health 

Organisation report into the 

effects of cannabis. The 

campaign is definitelY rolling 

but to where and whY? 

Decriminalising cannabis 

is in some sense a minor 

movement 4 

issue. The new government has an 

extremely long list of pressing matters

welfare reform, new environmental 

legislation, constitutional reform and so 

on. All of these seem more urgent 

because they effect us all. 

Decriminalised cannabis would be used 

mainly for recreational purposes and so 

seems to belong to a more selfish 

agenda. 

This is not entirely fair but it does 

sound reasonable. Why not then extend 

the issue to take in the bigger question 

of drugs in general? This is a big 

concern for most people, not least those 

addicted, those in prison for minor 

offences and those who fear the associated 

crime. There are huge questions 

about how drugs and drug policy affect 

the crime rate, the health of the population 

and the economy. Surely this is an 

issue fit for general consideration? 

Unfortunately, there are serious 

problems with such a suggestion. When 

words such as 'heroin' or 'cocaine' are 

mentioned the shutters go up and 

c4 

{ 

.a 

,I 

reasoned debate is an early casualty. 

These words provoke an almost unparalleled 

moral outrage from the press. Even 

the Sun has written fierce leaders on 

the subject. ln fact the whole vocabulary 

is combative. We talk about a war 

on drugs and the image of war is that of 

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conflict resolved by force and not 

debate. 

The use of the military language is 

no coincidence. The current President of 

the United States (who did 

not inhale) has spoken of 

, the war on drugs as the 

natural successor to the 

Cold War. He is simply 

continuing the long 

American tradition of a hard 

line stance against this 

'menace'. lt is in this 

country that the former 

Chief of the Los Angeles 

Police suggested that casual 

drug users should face 

execution; little wonder that 

the politlcians dance to this 

beat. 

American policy sets 

the agenda for Britain and 

indeed most of the world. 

The latest manifestation of 

this is the appointment of a 

drugs 'Czar' by the government 

(a distinctly American 

idea). The root of the 

Americans' power is the 

lnternational Narcotics 

Control Board (INCB) which 

they dominate. This is a UN 

{|i:'- 

# 

agency which has a 

fearsome range of powers. 

It can cut off the supply of 

any morphine-based and 

other medical drugs to a 

country which incurs its 

wrath. Furthermore it is 

willing to use its powers. 

Whole rafts of UN legislation 

restrict the freedom of 

countries to set their own 

laws. Conflict on issues of 

risk and freedom go all the 

way to the top. 

With this background it 

is impossible to have a full 

and unconditional debate on 

drugs. far less attempt any 

,novcmcnt 5 

radical reforms. Yet some countries have 

dared to implement reforms on the 

medical uses of drugs and even the 

recreational use of cannabis. Cannabis is 

a lightweight issue and so may provide 

a partial solution to the impasse all drug 

debates face. 

A major advantage is the fact that 

cannabis has a claim to be medically 

beneficial and people take it for this 

purpose. The tone of a debate must 

become more civilised when talking 

about people suffering from serious 

illness who are looking for a brief respite 

from their pains. Not only that, there is 

an attitude, common enough, that using 

cannabis is in the same risk category as 

drinking alcohol or smoking. The wide 

availability of these drugs and the 

illegality of the other can seem absurd. 

Further, usage of cannabis is sufficiently 

widespread for it to be part of the 

mainstream of society. With that 

background the debate has been 

running for several months now Many 

issues have been dragged into consideration. 

The long term medical risks have 

featured in a World Health Organisation 

report where one chapter suggested 

cannabis was not as dangerous as 

alcohol or tobacco. There were accusations 

of suppression on the part of the 

INCB and vigorous denials but the 

whole affair demonstrated how science 

is answerable to its political paymasters. 

Concerns about the health risks 

involved in smoking the drug have been 

raised (as well as healthier alternatives 

such as baking it in a cake and eating 

it). Drug tests after road traffic 

accidents are becoming more commonplace 

as awareness of the dangers of 

drugs and driving are raised. The wide 

variation in the enforcement of the law 

has been highlighted especially by Radio 

1's series Sorted. The punishment for 

possession seems to largely depend on 

postcodes. 

A lighter touch has been the list of 

celebrities and public figures supporting 

decriminalisation-a list that has been 

steadily growing. People have had to 

confront the issue and work out if they 

do believe cannabis is comparable with 

alcohol. 

It may be argued that the campaign 

to decriminalise cannabis is here proving

its worth and avoiding the charge that it 

does not belong to 'grown up' politics. 

ln some sense it is the very essence of 

'grown up' politics. The bigger question 

has been shown to be too difficult to 

handle. This is true of heroin and 

cocaine but also of ecstacy. The only 

thing to do is tackle an easier issue and 

hope that the results can be generalised. 

The cannabis campaign has proven 

interesting and informative and has been 

conducted with some skill and a fair 

dash of humour. The list of celebrities is 

a particularly good way of humanising 

the whole affair. The bigger issue and 

the bigger questions are lurking in the 

wings and this campaign will have a lot 

to teach us when these are addressed. 

lf that seems a highly artificial 

argument. stop to consider how easily it 

can be applied in other situations. The 

simple fact is that big changes are 

rarely. if ever, made in a direct manner. 

Consider the campaign to decriminalise 

homosexuality. Many of the original 

supporters portrayed this as an 'illness' 

not because they believed that to be 

true but they appreciated the effect it 

would have on a hostile public. ln this 

way homosexuality was humanised and 

homosexuals could begin to receive 

sympathy rather than outright hatred. 

Legislation did follow but it was 

extremely inadequate. Two men maY 

consent to have sex in private but the 

presence of anyone else rends the act 

illegal no matter what consent exists. lt 

is still perfectly legal to sack an 

employee for being gay. So these laws 

were not direct means of achieving 

equality; they dealt with some easier 

issues but the whole convoluted 

problem is far from solved. 

Another example from 'grown uP' 

politics is that of constitutional reform. 

Government ministers accept happily 

that there is no simple and direct 

answer to the West Lothian questionnamely 

why Scottish MPs are able to 

vote on domestic issues in England 

(controlled by Westminster) but not the 

equivalent issues in Scotland (controlled 

by the Scottish Parliament). 

By way of firm conclusion it can be 

said that considering risks is a risky 

business indeed..Do you agree with the 

law and why? lf not what is your 

response to be? Do you ignore it and/or 

work to change it? Why is it important 

anyway? lt begins from that first initial 

risk: daring to question information you 

have been given and being prepared to 

stumble into the unknown. 'Twas ever 

thus and as for cannabis I suspect the 

story has many more twists and turns 

left in store. @ 

Colin Mason is a student at the 

University of Edinburgh 

Come Out, Come 

Out YVhoever You 

A1rgooo 

I have been asked on many occasions 

| *fren I first "came out" as a gay 

man. as though it had a precise date 

I and time. lt always reminds me of 

that breed of Christians who quite 

proudly recite the time and date of being 

"born again": "l first met the Lord on 13 

April 1992, in my friend Kenny's 

basement... no, there were no hallucinogens 

involved!!" 

I have yet to pin down the time and 

date of coming out. lt begins at the first 

rick gorlond 

ties ond binds 

inkling of having a self-definition. I 

suppose. I can remember when I first 

used the word gay, when I first told an 

individual. But the second I opened my 

mouth for the first time to name myself, 

my control over my own destiny was 

given to anyone who knew that basic 

truth. Not unlike the story of the God of 

Moses and Miriam, who was asked to 

give a name of self-reference. ln that 

story, the name taken is simPlY "l am 

which I am", essentially. a non-name. 

The power in self-disclosure is an important 

theme in our religious history. And 

the knowledge of a name or identitY 

gives one power over that person. 

I must mark my parents as being the 

most pivotal point in my coming out, the 

point after which I honestly did not care 

who knew. I told them in a letter, a 

cowardly act which allowed for their 

considerable feelings to emerge and 

which allowed me to craft my words in 

a way that would not be defensive. 

Their response startles me to this day. 

They came to see me, and assured me 

of their love. And without saying it in 

words. they made it evident that they 

did not want to talk about this anymore. 

This was my great fear: silence. I was 

prepared for argument and conflict: that 

would be a sign of love to me. I was 

even hoping for banner waving. t-shirt 

sporting, pride-emblazoned-on-bumpersticker 

kinds of scenarios. But I got the 

same silence I had known for years, 

except it wasn't from me anymore, it 

was from them. 

The knowledge of my confession 

hung in the air when I saw them. I felt 

the burden of being their teacher, of 

having to accustom them to my world' 

But how do I do that? lt occurred to me 

that I was now in the parent role... and 

was without a clue to assist them in 

their education. 

Six years later, and mY Parents have 

attended their first PFLAG meeting 

(Parents and Friends of Lesbians and 

Gays). lt came out of nowhere, a call 

from a recruiter who knew me, and 

bang! Bowling was re-scheduled and off 

they went to their little meeting. My 

mom spoke to me that week and told 

me it was interesting and they would go 

back. I thought back to our first talk and 

saw how much had changed. how 

clearly they lT CAlrlE OUT OF 

::*J""tr' NowHERE, A 

fears. And I CALL FROlvt A 

realized RECRUITER 

;::il:X1 wHo Kl{Ew }rE, 

as well. lt AHD BANGI 

took them EOWLING 1YAS 

RE*SCHEDULED 

A}ID OFF THEY 

ItrE}IT TO THEIR 

LITTLE UEETING. 

the time they 

needed, and 

their own 

way to do it. 

They were 

naming 

themselves to me, and allowing me the 

power of their self-disclosure. 

It seems to me that coming out is an 

expression of change, the change that 

happens to all of us as we grow and 

redefine ourselves. lt is the courage that 

it takes to share this with family, friends, 

community. Being locked in an image is 

a terrible thing, no matter the context, 

and it is something that is as hard to 

realize about one's parents as it is to 

realize about one's children. 

I might even go as far as to say that 

God is coming out, in the person of Jesus, 

a personal and vulnerable incarnation of 

one whose image had been radicallY 

different to that point. This was an act 

that many were not able to accept, and 

yet which held a basic truth that could not 

be ignored by many as well. l'm still 

working on this theory! lf you agree with 

this, great! lf not, well. I hope it brings lots 

of mail to Movementl fi 

Rick Garland is the National Coordinator 

of Canadian SCM 

movement 6

Tne Oxford Dictionarv of Modern Slang defines the term as "an expression of contemptous or 

angrv rejection." There are verv good reasons why people living with Hlv and AIDS may feel this 

wav about the Church, as Mike Way explains 

The Minist 

Ol F?f?f?f Ofi 

I 

nce was a time when the very 

mention of 'AIDS' in church 

situations would generate an 

uneasy and uncomfortable 

atmosphere. Understandable, in so far as 

mention of any sexually transmitted 

disease in polite society might create at 

least some sort of hushed ripple. Clergy 

got fidgety, lay people waited for rescue. 

The unmentionable had been 

mentioned-a sexual disease which kills. 

and which brings into the light those 

things which were hidden in darknessabout 

as welcome as the incarnate 

Word who is held in high regard in 

Christian circles as having done 

a rather similar thing. But the 

exposure promised this time is 

the sexual exploits and misdemeanours 

of which other 

people (if it were not for this 

infectious disease) could have 

remained happily unaware or 

in denial. 

Over time, of course, the 

Christian compassion card 

became played more often 

than the judgement or 

denial card-and so courses 

were run, projects set up. 

ministries delivered, concerns 

expressed, suffering identified 

with and 'the lgve of God' 

signalled. The church engine 

had cranked into life and now 

AIDS could be grouped into the 

social, moral and prayerful 

conscience of the institutional 

churches-at least sometimes. 

But hopefully without it 

happening to any of their 

clergy. 

An 'AIDS opening' was 

prised in such a way that 

AIDS and HIV infec- 

tion could 

be 'embraced within', rather than 'kept 

without'. And so, at its worst, 

Religious were writing articles for 

Religious Magazines telling other 

Religious of how difficult this ministry 

among Religious was-how stressful, 

tiring, painful and upsetting. Written by 

people who were not HIV positive for 

people who were not HIV positive, and 

who 

movemgnt 7 

didn't stand a cat in hell's chance of 

becoming HIV positive. Many had never 

had sex, ever. 

Small wonder then. that many who 

are in fact living with this life-threatening 

condition lost patience yet again 

with a church which institutionally had 

at first rejected, stigmatised and ignored 

them; and which was now holding them 

so close it seemed that their very breath 

and voice was silenced beneath the 

imposed veil of 'unconditional' love. 

And this love so often given at the 

price of their silence, their 

complicity, their passivity 

and their expected 

gratitud e. 

Those who 

had been kept 

firmly on the 

outside had 

now been 

herded within 

the wedding 

feast was 

suddenly not 

full, it 

seemed, and 

those at the 

roadside 

were indeed 

being 

dragged in 

and 

compelled to 

sit and eat.

After all. we wanted to have fun, and 

we had alreadY bought the food and 

drink, so come and Party You mustwhether 

what we have to offer is what 

you want or not. You will accept it and 

be grateful! 

People who are HIV Positive have 

had to familiarise themselves too well 

with the territory of disempowerment. 

So much ministry, however well intentioned, 

is experienced by people with 

HIV and AIDS and is intrusive and highhanded 

because it is often ministry 

'with answers' when theY know from 

painful experience that when it comes 

to HIV 'there are no neat answers'. 

AIDS is full of uncertainties-as is lifeand 

mirrors the risks of daring to live in 

the real world and love in the real world. 

There is no place in reality for a 'Jim'll 

Fix lt ' God: to face that there maY be 

no justice, no fairness, no explanation, 

no meaning. 

But there is a place for the 'Ministry 

of Fuck Off'. lt is a learning ground for 

carers and ministers to have to accept 

that, unless they themselves are HIV 

positive or have AIDS, they do not know 

what it is like, or what someone needs. 

lf we can accept the rejection of those 

to whom we might need to have a 

ministry but who themselves might 

place us at the end of their prioritised 

queue of peoPle they want aroundthen 

maybe we have begun to learn 

something. 

All we can PossiblY bring is our own 

actual and real experience of rejection, 

pain, victimisation, illness, sex, 

sexuality. loss and bereavement: as well 

as our affirming experiences of love and 

acceptance. We need to be prepared to 

'tell our own story' without bullshit-as 

it is-for real. Then perhaps we might 

discover that ministry is not ours to 

give, but theirs for us to receive. 

Whether our common bond of humanity 

is to be found beyond us in the projections 

of a transcendent God. or to be 

found within our mutual companionship 

on this journey we call life-or both-is 

ours to choose. But one thing is for sure, 

we have no right to make that choice 

for anyone else. Then PerhaPs' to 

paraphrase Eckhart, we might begin to 

learn what some'with HIV know, that 

'Between God and AIDS, there is no 

between'. @ 

Mike Way is Director of The CARA 

Tiust. He is an Anglican priest and has 

worked in education, psychotherapy and 

AIDS ministrY. 

. CARA seeks to support the spiritual 

exploration of those with HIV/AIDS and 

challenge the churches to face the 

issues of belief, sexuality and mortality 

which AIDS raises. 

r The CARA Trust, The Basement, 178 

Lancaster Road, London W11 1QU. 

Barbara Crowther of CAFOD explains the 'biggest campaign 

in the world' - Jubilee 2000 

Linldng Up 

Against Debt 

ebt is arguably the single biggest impediment to human development today' lt 

- I I i" a traoJdv and a scandal that an international financial system, which was 

fzl able to"fini over f 1OO billion to bail out the private banks and 'tiger' 

economies affected by the current Asian financial crisis, has been unable to 

mobilise the political will to find money to release the most impoverished countries 

of Africa from the slavery of their debts. 

ln 1996, a new package on debt relief was agreed by the IMF' World Bank 

and major creditor governments of the Paris club. The Heavily lndebted Poor 

Country (HIPC) lnitiative was the first really comprehensive attempt at calculating 

all the different types of debt owed by individual countries, and reducing them to a 

level deemed to be sustainable. Two years later, the so-called 'robust exit from 

debt' is failing. of 41 HIPC countries, only uganda has reached some measure of 

debt relief - a reduction ol f.2O million a year (out of [190 million it is due to pay) 

for two years. Hardly adequate to increase spending on healthcare beyond the current 

US$3 a day it is able to spend, and thereby prevent one child in five dying 

before the age of five. Meanwhile Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Mozambique, Zambia and 

Tanzania are unlikely to receive any debt relief before 2000' 

Jubilee2OO0aimstochangethispoliticalclimate.Alreadythecampaign 

has been acknowledged by the World Bank as "a conscience that is holding the 

financial community's feet to the fire". Already, the GB world leaders (US. 

Canada, France, UK, Russia. China, Germany, ltaly) have had to change the agenda 

for their Birmingham meeting in May to accommodate the growing public concern 

around lack of debt relief. 

The goals of the camPaign are: 

-A debt-free start to the new Millennium for a billion people! 

-To collect 21 .3 million signatures in favour of debt relief , and make the Jubilee 

2OOO petition the biggest the world has ever seen 

-To mark the G8 meetings in Birmingham in May 1998, and Cologne in June 1999 

with a huge public presence pressing for substantial cancellation 

_To lobby ind advocate for the Hlpc lnitiative to be speeded up and reformed in 

favour of more generous relief, based on investing in human development - or for 

an alternative to be found 

-To increase public awareness of the effects of debt, especially on the people of 

Africa in order to bring about political and economic change 

For more information contact Jubilee 2000, P o Box 100, London sE1 7RT' Tel 

Ol]-1 4O1 ggg9. CAFOD also has a range of materials on debt, including petitions, 

action cards, posters, ideas for group discussion and worship. available from 

CAFOD, Romero Glose, stockwell Rd, London swg 9TY. Tel 01 71 733 7900 0r e- 

mail sstanes@caf od.org'uk 

movement B

Movemenf publishes its 100th issue this summer. Movement's first editon viv Broughton, talks 

to us about how the magazine came into being and about SCM in the early 197O's 

Present at 

the Bl?th 

t is hard to believe, but there is no 

documented history of the magazine 

you're reading. The back 

issues exist (at least in a 

couple of complete sets), 

and no doubt minutes and 

files relating to it can be 

found in the SCM's 

archives in Selly Oak. But 

there is nothing said 

about what it was like 

to be around for the 

early days of 

Movement. 

Which was why 

we were so pleased 

to locate Viv 

Broughton, 

Movement's first editor. Viv 

Broughton edited 

Movement for three years 

and was author of the 

column "Ear To The 

Ground", (a predecessor 

of satirical 

columns such as lhe 

Serpent), for another 

two years. He also 

designed the famous 

"fist" image for the 

1 973 "Seeds of 

Liberation" conference 

which later became the 

SCM logo. 

Following his time in 

SCM, Viv has had a 

prodigious career which 

has included developing 

the ethnic newspaper Ihe 

Voice (which spanned 13 

years) and producing a 

Channel 4 series on the 

history of Gospel Music. Viv now 

runs The Premises, a recording 

studio in Hackney, which has been 

the home for then-lndie bands Blur and 

Elastica. We gave him some back issues 

and started rolling the tape ... 

For its first two issues, Movement was 

a newsletter known as Bilbo. How did 

the one evolve into the other? 

Bilbo was done by Chris Duncan and 

Maggie Whyte, and they 

were the previous 

regime, sort of the politburo 

of SCM, but they 

were great people. There 

was a fairly straight 

Christian Marxist axis 

running through SCM when 

myself and a few other people 

came in and we were a bit 

more surreal than that 

and took it off in a 

slightly different 

d irection. 

We thought that Bilbo 

was a bit boring, really, 

and a bit too earnest. We 

been involved-and 

when I say we I mean myself 

and some others who had 

become involved in SCM-in a 

magazine called the Catonsville 

Road Runner. which was I 

suppose part of a mid-sixties 

underground newspaper type 

thing. lt was hooked up with 

the Berkeley Free Church and 

various other radical Christian 

movements going on in the 

States. Road Runner ran 

very successfully and 

attracted an enormous 

amount of interest quite 

out of proportion to its 

circulation 

I was hired as 

Communications 

Officer for the SCM 

on the strength of what 

d been doing with Foad 

Runner, and it was really to take 

charge of the pamphlets and the other 

publications of the SCM, so we 

launched a new magazine, which was 

Movement. 

fnovcment e 

Movement was a sort of slightly 

more grown-up version of Road Runner, 

a little bit more sensible. An awful lot of 

that stuff is extremely embarrassing 

when I look back on it now. But there's 

also some very good stuff 

-l mean 

Thomas Merton lwho had an editorial 

posthumously published in Movement's 

first issuel you can't really argue with. 

Some of it's a little bit sixties, a little bit 

hippie/naive. I seem to remember we 

had great cartoons-there was a lot of 

humour and a lot of self-deprecating 

humour as well. We didn't take it all 

deathly seriously, which I think was its 

one saving grace. 

What was the initial reaction to 

Movement? 

Well, I think there was a certain 

amount of unease throughout the old 

guard in SCM at the new people who 

were coming in, particularly who were 

involved at Annandale. our headquarters, 

and I can understand that with 

hindsight! l've never been a student in 

my life, I've never been to university, 

and I think a number of the others who 

had come in had not been involved 

either. We came from radical Christian 

movements. lt's difficult to separate 

what was just the normal anxiety about 

change in Movement and what were 

serious objections. 

During Movement's first few years, the 

SGM sold the Annandale offices and 

moved to an intentional community at 

Wick, near Bristol. How did that come 

about? 

There were serious objections to 

selling Annandale. lt was reckoned by 

many to be the sort of 'nest-egg'-you 

were killing the golden goose, basically. 

Annandale was this piece of prime 

property and it was worth quite a lot of 

money at that stage and I suppose there 

was a feeling that students can run 

around doing all sorts of extraordinary

things, whatever they like, as long as 

they didn't kill things off for the next 

generation who want to do their own 

projects. 

It became part of the whole debate 

whether a movement like SCM should 

be highly centralised with a London 

head office in an expensive suburb, or it 

should be something based more on the 

model of Taize and lona communities, 

where there was a spiritual core as well 

as an organisational core that both fed 

and was contributed to by the rest of 

the movement. 

So we had people coming from 

different directions, but it seem to make 

a lot of sense to sell Annandale, buy a 

place somewhere outside of London 

that's maybe more accessible to people 

from different parts of the country where 

students could come and have weekend 

conferences and week-long conferences. 

Really, it was the lona model. 

What happened with Wick? Reading 

about it today one has one of two 

visions of Wick-one is a legendarY 

magical place near Bristol and the other 

is this sort of highly dysfunctional 

community which self-destructed. 

Probably both are true in many respects. 

Both are absolutely true! lt went 

the same way of many communes, if 

you like, at the time. They are such 

intense places, and you have to be 

down to the most basic level of keeping 

the place clean, doing the cooking, 

looking after the gardens, fixing the roof 

through to maintaining a good relationship 

with the student constituency, all 

of whom had different expectations at 

Wick and what it should be. Plus, SCM 

is one of those dynamic movements 

that continually changes. So within a 

year or two there were new PeoPle 

coming in who had different 

expectations and it didn't necessarily 

work for all of them. So there were 

lots of pressures. We'd become, quite 

quickly, the headquarters, we were 

the establishment, and lots of people 

were querying that-"who are those 

people out in the country and what 

are they doing?" and that sort of 

thing. 

It drove us all right to the edge. I 

mean, I can look back on it now with a 

lot of fondness and interest and it was 

just one of those amazing experiences 

to go through, but I wouldn't go 

through it again! People survived it in 

different ways. And the children 

survived it in different ways. My kids 

are now 25,26 and they were 3 and 4 

when they first went to Wick, and they 

all remember it as just this amazing 

place. They all got to run around in the 

garden and do exciting things, but it 

was quite traumatic for them as well 

because couples split up. 

6fWE IUST TRIED TO BRING 11{ THE 

BEST OF THE NEw I'llllDS AND THE 

NEW THINKING... I THINK THAT'S 

REALLY WHAT SCl.l SHOULD BE 

DOING, BRIHGING TOGETHER THE 

CUTTING =DGE 

OF THEOLOGY AND 

POLlTlCS...tt 

extraordinarily strong to sustain a 

marriage between two people; this was 

almost like a marriage between fifteen 

people, with very small children involved 

and so on. Not to mention 60-1O0 

students descending on your house 

every week throughout the year. lt was 

extremely exciting. There were some 

great conferences and we put together 

a whole series of exciting residential 

courses and conventions and so on. You 

know it was great while it lasted. 

Could it iust not sustain itself by virtue 

of being a 'marriage of fifteen people' or 

were there other external factors that 

were around in the early seventies? 

I think it was more that the intensity 

of the community within Wick was so 

great in terms of just having to cope 

with the life of that community-right 

Movement in general had a tremendous 

amount of clout with the PeoPle You 

interviewed and who contributed-Dan 

Berrigan contributed, Dorothy Day was 

interviewed, Mary Daly was 

interviewed-was it through your 

connections with Road Runner? 

It was really trom Road Runner times 

I think. I remember Mary Daly came for 

Christmas at Wick, and it was quite an 

interesting Christmas! She wasn't too 

keen on Father Christmas if I remember 

rightly, although the kids were of 

course! 

We just tried to bring in the best of 

the new minds and the new thinking 

and the new theologians and so on. I 

think that's really what SCM should be 

doing is bringing together the cutting 

edge of theology and politics and new 

thought and putting them together with 

movgment 10 

this new generation that are coming up 

through universities. I think that's part 

of what SCM should alwaYs do. So we 

saw it absolutely within the tradition of 

SCM, that it wasn't ever a case of 

trying to lead all these students in some 

doctrinaire direction, but simply to put 

them altogether in circumstances in 

which they could explore those ideas 

and come to their own conclusions of 

what they thought and so on. 

What was the process of Putting 

together Movement back then, both at 

Annandale and at Wick? 

It was thrown together quite quickly. 

There were no computers back then' lt 

was typed on a typewriter in strips and 

we'd measure it out with pencil lines for 

the columns and then cut them uP and 

paste them on. All the headlines were 

done with Letraset-quite neatly as I 

notice now-it was verY laborious. 

How do you think radical Christianity, or 

even Christianity generally has changed 

in the past 25 years. 

l've no idea, l've moved on. I 

followed a different path. What I learned 

then in that period of my life informed 

what I do now, and my own relationship 

to the Christian Gospel is important to 

me and gives me a grounding, a 

sounding board, a reference point. But I 

don't really keep in touch with what's 

going on within radical Christian 

movements, simPly because l've been 

involved in other things. My 13 years 

involvement with lhe Vorce newspaper 

and that whole emerging generation of 

ethnic publications has been very very 

interesting, and lots of stuff that I 

learned back then in SCM became 

useful. The editing of Movement and the 

knowledge of how to put newspapers 

and magazines together became 

extremely useful in terms of the development 

of The Voice and I know lots of 

people who went through SCM at that 

time went on and can be found all over 

the place, all using the things the things 

learned then, and l'm sure that that's 

true with every generation of SCM. lt's 

a university in itself, a sort of spiritual 

university. 

How did you come up with the name 

Movement? 

Well I thought it was a bit of a dull 

name-it was the best we could come 

up with at the time. Obviously it came 

out of the Student Christian Movement 

and it seemed quite a good name. But it 

wasn't as good as the Catonsville Road 

Runner.ftl 

oComing soon: Movement 1OO, 

featuring a history of the magazine and 

reprinting some of the best articles from 

the past 26 years. 

I

For A Friend 

A he was my friend and I couldn't 

\ rretp ner. 

\-, 

Her death was, in some ways, quick. 

She killed herself in just fifteen minutes. 

A deliberately chosen use of the 

maximum chunk of time allotted to her 

to be alone. ln other ways, though, it 

was the longest and slowest death 

-death by severe, debilitating, 

seemingly inescapable mental illness. 

This is what she was like: bold, 

courageous, sensitive, intelligent, 

generous, humorous, charming, 

persuasivg incisive, persistent and 

rebellious. The impact of institutions 

was stamped on her being: the military 

had shaped her family life; a boarding 

school her childhood and adolescence; 

the mental health system her short 

adulthood. All in their own ways brutal, 

fostering dependence then failing to fulfil 

their side of the bargain. Yet in many 

ways she was a 'light' person-wearing 

the impact of these institutions not as 

victim but as resister. Apparently just ten 

days before her death, on her 32nd 

birthday, she was ordering take-away pizza 

for herself and her friends in the hospital. 

Sitting in laceless shoes, scoffing. Just like 

'before' (if there was a 'before'). 

Surfing Human Rights 

l\ 

id you ever receive one of these 

I I rather disturbing pictures in your 

l/ letterbox. makiig your breakfast 

taste stale? Amnesty lnternational will 

have asked you to write a letter of 

support for one of the prisoners of 

conscience they care for. But then 

many of you do this already and thus 

need not read further. 

But for those among you who never 

felt sure about Amnesty and its work. or 

who want more background information 

about the particular situation, the 

answer in only a browser away: 

http://www.amnesty.org/. Amnesty 

lnternational's website not only offers 

you links to all its Branches onlinq but it 

offers information on current campaigns 

and background information on most 

countries. 

Amnesty's current campaigns can be 

found online at'http://wwwamnesty.org/ 

campaign/ index.html. Take a look at 

"Kenya: Repression and Resistance" or 

the "UN Commission on Human Rights 

is 50 Years old". The report on Kenya 

reveals largely unknown facts about a 

well-loved tourist destination. For 

example: "Frequent police brutality goes 

largely unpunished. Police routinely beat 

suspects, while some prisoners have 

been subjected to sustained torture. 

Peaceful protesters have been violently 

attacked by police, and unarmed criminal 

*" 

Her death flings me back like no 

other. Back to school. when we were 

close; when she was happier. I 

remember the late nights, the long 

walks; the'meaning of life' talks. She 

was scary even then, sometimes; the 

times when she didn't come back, 

following the meaning deep into herself 

that I worried she'd never reconnect. 

We'd feel so close, but then she'd disappear-instantly. 

This death flings me back to that 

endless puzzle which was: what was 

wrong with my friend? How come none 

of us could help her; fix things for her? 

suspects have been shot dead even 

though they posed no threat to life." 

The campaign for the UN commission 

on Human Rights reminds us so 

poignantly that we do have basic rights 

t1 

olison urebster 

tell-tole signs 

lf 

and we must defend them. The 

Universal Declaration of Human Rights 

(http ://rights. amnesty.org/english/ 

rights/index.html), one of the founding 

documents of the United Nations, is 50 

years old and needs as much support 

today as it did at its inception. Many 

dirk gr0tzmocher 

ths @ Golumn 

critics of this declaration claim these are 

"western" rights and values and do not 

allow for local customs and cultural 

differences, thus arguing that it may 

well be alright to deny certain rights to 

some groups of people, because the 

local custom tells you so. 

You can sign up to the support of 

these rights at http://rights.amnesty. 

org/. Follow the "Human Rights 

Caravan" round the world, and who 

knows, it might come round your neck 

of the woods. 

Amnesty is possibly best known for 

its continued campaign for the abolition 

of the death penalty. lt continues to do 

this and has a wealth of resources for 

Mental health is a mystery, it seems to 

me. lt cannot be caused-only fostered. 

But mental illness is scary to those of us 

who have never experienced it. How can 

we not feel this fear? ls it true that 

sometimes there is simply nothing we 

can do? Are there times in relationships 

when we are left powerless, or is that 

just an excuse? 

It flings me back, also, to spirituality. 

My first prayer in ten years: God, love 

her more than I would; understand her 

more than I could. I feel the need for the 

familiar structures and expressions of 

God-language, but find in the process of 

searching for it that it's now no longer in 

any sense familiar, so long has it lain 

unused. But it's the only language that 

can express the importance of what's 

happened, and I need it for that. So a 

friend lights a candle for me, for her. 

On my behalf because now I am 

religiously mute. @ 

Alison Webster is a former editor of 

Movement and a freelance writer 

this campaign (http://www.amnesty.org/ 

ailib/intcamidp/index.html) However not 

many of you will know about the 

campaign for an lnternational Criminal 

Court, about to be founded in Rome in 

May this year (http://www.amnesty.it/ 

eventi/icc/docs/index.htm). The ICC will 

be the court in which international 

criminal crimes such as war-crimes will 

be heard, offering an end to the adhoc 

courts trying war criminals, Iike those in 

Bosnia and Rwanda. The court will offer 

stability and makes it possible to be 

called upon by a private person as well 

as states. The current discussion is 

raging about the exclusion of certain 

crimes from the agenda of the court as 

the powers fear prosecution on certain 

items, such as the possession of nuclear 

weapons and other weapons of mass 

destruction. The lnternational Court of 

Justice, the highest court in the world, 

declared nuclear weapons illegal in June 

of last year. 

Oh, yes, you may like to start closer 

to home: Amnesty lnternational UK 

(http://www.amnesty.org.uk). However, 

if you are interested in human rights and all 

its associated questions you must visit the 

suite of Amnesty lnternational sites. @ 

Dirk Griitzmacher is a Ph.D. student in 

the University of Edinburgh. Visit his 

website at http://www.ed.ac.uk/ - dig 

movement 11

According to a 1995 Defence White Papen the objective of Britain's securitv policv is to protect 

our "vital national interests". So whv has the church acquiesced over a war driven bV selfinterest 

as thev did during the recent Culf Crisis? lrsan Merchant explains the background to 

this conflict, and explains why he renouced his confirmation in the Church of Scotland 

Empowering 

the Barbarians i 

.{'"..s 

rill 

It isn't that 

there's a war on. 

No, 

The horror 

is that 

we have never known peace, 

And that we are 

only now 

beginning to realise. 

(from the Art & Revolution project) 

Since the Second World War, the 

United States' objective (with 

Britain) is control over Middle 

East oil-"a stupendous source 

of strategic power, and one of 

the greatest material prizes in 

history" according to the US 

State Department. This has 

created the 'new world order'- 

the establishment of the US as 

sole superpower, "the world's 

rent-a-cops" as one newspaPer 

put it. During the 1980s, with 

support from the West, Saddam 

Hussein committed his worst 

atrocities, including the use of 

chemical weapons on Kurds in 

1 988. 

Noam Chomsky writes 

"...the US was tilting strongly 

toward lraq to make sure that 

they won the lraq-lran war. lt 

continued until the one crime for 

which Saddam Hussein cannot 

be forgiven: he disobeyed orders 

on August 2 1990 [the invasion 

of Kuwaitl. lmmediately after, 

within a few months, the US 

was supporting him again. There 

was no secret about it. ln 

March. right after the fighting 

stopped, when Saddam turned to 

crushing the Shiites in the South and 

then the Kurds in the North, the US 

stood by quietly and assisted him". 

Operation Desert Storm in 1991 was 

not about opposing Saddam's aggression 

against Kuwait, but was intended 

to contain Third World nationalism. The 

current intervention is to allow the UN 

to inspect lraq's weapons programs 

though it is doubtful that this is the real 

intention of the West. ln 1990 Saddam 

offered to destroy his chemical and 

biological weapons if lsrael agreed to 

destroy its non-conventional weaponsincluding 

nuclear weapons. The US 

welcomed the offer, but rejected the 

idea of linkage with lsrael as this would 

not be in the interests of the US. ln 

general, the purpose of western intervention 

in the Third World is both to 

demonstrate that 'might is right' and to 

justify to western populations the 

enormous (and highly profitable) military 

spending - necessary because of the 

moveanont 12 

threat from Third World nationalism. 

A. Sivanandan, editor of the journal 

Race and C/ass, wrote of the 1991 Gulf 

War: "This is not our war, this is not a 

war of Black and Third World peoples. 

This is not a war for us, this is a war 

against us wherever we are-whether in 

Europe, the United States, or any part of 

the Third World". 

The recent Gulf Crisis is yet another 

part of the ongoing war on the Third 

World, arguably a racist war. As 

Chomsky says of racism, "When you 

have your boot on someone's neck, You 

have to have a justification for it. The 

justification has to be their 

depravity...That's why l'm doing this. 

*$. 

Maybe l'm even doing them good. And 

if it's their depravity there's got to be 

something that makes them different 

from me". This could be anything-such 

o J 

1 

o 

C 

l 

1

I 

il 

l6 

as skin colour, way of life or 

sexuality. Racism is a dominant 

discourse, vital to British society, 

which shapes our understanding 

of the world, both creating and 

justifying oppression. 

Sadly, the peace movement 

has often accepted the 

assumptions of racism 

unawares, even while opposing 

wars. Many people accept the 

justification for the intervention 

in lraq-that Saddam is too 

irresponsible to possess 

chemical and biological 

weapons-even if they are 

opposed to military action. I 

suggest that this is based in 

classical racist discourse. A 

discourse which upholds the 

West as responsible enough to 

possess weapons of mass 

destruction, while the "darkies" 

are irresponsible uncivilised 

barbarians who must be 

denied them. We need only 

remember that the US is the 

one country to have dropped 

nuclear bombs. 

Whenever we use a discourse about 

'the Other', we accept the power 

relations and assumptions of superiority 

within the discourse, whoever we are. 

These distinctions of 'us' and 'them' are 

central in the media coverage of war. A 

'democratic country' is one which 

serves western interests. A 'non-democratib 

country' is one which does not. 

'Stability in the region' and 'international 

peace' mban maintaining western 

domination. And'national interests' 

means the business interests of the 

ruling class. 

According to the 1995 Defence 

White Paper, the objective of Britain's 

security policy is to protect our "vital 

national interests"-trade, raw materials 

overseas. the sea routes for trade and 

British investments in the rest of the 

world. As Malcolm Rifkind explained in 

1993. the purpose of Trident. the British 

nuclear weapons system, is to give "an 

unmistakable message of our willingness 

to defend our vital interests to the 

utmost". These "interests" are largely in 

the Third World, so British military policy 

is openly a war on the Third World. This 

I HAVE TRIED IN THE PAST TO 

ARGUE THAT CHRISTIANS SHOULD 

BE PACIFISTS, BUT I tto LOilcER 

cAN, FOR I HAVE UNDIRSTOOD 

THAT THE REALITY OF 

CHRISTIANITY IS THAT IT HAS 

BEEI{ COMPATIBLH 1YITH SOTH 

PACIFISM ANT} MITITARISM. 

policy has been continued by both 

Conservative and Labour governments, 

so the recent nuclear threats on lraq by 

Robin Cook should come as no surprise 

-simply the ongoing policy of war. 

I do not trust Saddam with weapons 

of mass destruction, but nor do I trust 

Blair, Clinton or anyone else with them. 

As British citizens working for peace, 

our responsibility-and possibility-is to 

end British militarism. 

Peters makes an example of her-he 

presides over a violent gang rape. 

Washington is a pimp with many 

Third World nations prostituting 

themselves economically and culturally. 

lraq is a Stella, disobeying orders, and 

so, through violence, is made into an 

example for the other prostitutes. And 

like Stella herself, the country of lraq 

contains many internal conflicts and 

troubles. 

We have a choice. We can either 

support the pimp in his exploitation, or 

we can support the prostitute who 

stands up to the pimp. lt is not in the 

interest of the pimp to empower a 

prostitute to make choices in her life - 

hence there is no Western support for 

the lraqi democratic opposition in exile. 

lf we are truly to empower a prostitute. 

we must allow her to make her own 

choices and her own mistakes. To 

clarify, I feel we should be allowing the 

lraqi people freedom to choose their own 

system of government, their own foreign 

policies and their own weapons systems. 

To trust is always a difficult risk, but 

there can only be peace when we 

overcome our fear. 

ln 1997, UNICEF estimated that 

over two million lraqi people had died 

because UN sanctions deprived the 

people of food, medicines and clean 

drinking water. Around two hundred 

and fifty thousand lraqi were killed or 

died during Operation Desert Storm. 

This involved aerial bombardment, 

lraqi conscripts buried alive by giant 

bulldozers, the use of napalm, 

nuclear threats, and. importantly. 

consent for all this manufactured in 

J 

o 

o 

n the recent film Stella Does Tricks, 

Stella is a Glaswegian teenager in 

London who finds security in prosti- 

I tuting herself for the profit of Peters, 

her pimp. Eventually she wants 

freedom, so declares that she will leave. 

This is a threat to Peters' power, for her 

action could inspire other girls. So 

movoment 13 

:ica 

C

the West by media lies and 

propaganda. 

The response of the Churches to the 

recent Gulf Crisis must be of concern to 

us all. On February 16, the Church Of 

Scotland Committee On Church And 

Nation sent a letter to all Scottish MPs 

which concluded "l would urge You 

to...ensure that we do not embark upon 

military action unless it is properly 

authorised by the United Nations, it is 

clear and limited in its objectives and 

will serve the wider purPoses of 

securing international peace". The letter 

is a secularised version of the 'Just War 

Theory' which argues that a war is 

theologically justified if it is a last 

resort, proportionate and likely to fulfil 

objectives of lasting Peace. 

Within the 'Just War' persPective of 

the Church. the deaths of millions of 

lraqi people seem acceptable so long as 

these deaths are authorised bY the 

United Nations. lt is interesting that the 

Church Of Scotland in 1 995 called for 

the lifting of sanctions. This contradiction 

arises out of applying theology to a 

situation which can only be understood 

by the dynamics of politics, history and 

ideology. Consequently. on the 24th 

February I renounced my confirmation 

into the Church of Scotland. I cannot 

reconcile my perspective on the Gulf 

Crisis with statements rooted in the 

'Just War Theory'. 

Much theology is simply mystification, 

the opium of the people, and, by 

historical definition, Christianity is the 

justification for all sorts of things. I do 

not feel that it is honest to justify either 

militarism or pacifism by reference to 

Christianity, the Gospel or any other 

institution or text. I have tried in the 

past to argue that Christians should be 

pacifists, but I no longer can, for I have 

understood that the reality of 

Christianity is that it has been compatible 

with both pacifism and militarism. 

lnstead, knowing deeply my shared 

humanity, I feel I need no justifications 

for my life. For myself, I choose nonviolence 

passionately. 

And so in looking at the intervention 

of the West in lraq, let us not use racist 

discourse. Let us not speak of the UN as 

a peacemaker and the Third World as 

irresponsible barbarians. Let us not 

forget that the war continues in threats, 

sanctions and policies. Let us not 

confuse reality with theology, or speak 

of peace where there is none. Let us 

speak, instead, of the little children. E 

o This is an adaptation of a talk "The 

Gulf: News, Fact and Fiction" given at a 

public meeting on February 2O in 

Edinburgh. 

lrfan Merchant is an activist and 

freelance writer. He lives in Glasgow. 

At Peace With Our 

Brokenness 

r n 1987 Gerrv Huohes SJ wrote an 

articte entitled 'Tile Spirituality of 

I Peace'. At that time the hot issue 

was nuclear weapons, their potential for 

destruction and our attitude towards 

them. The focus was clear, the choice 

was stark: are you for them or against 

them? An integrated spirituality meant 

that if you took a stance against nuclear 

weapons based on religious belief you 

^&ii, 

ruth horvev 

soundings in 

spirituolity 

would invariably find yourself concerned 

also about the food you eat and where it 

comes from, care for the earth, 

domestic violence, pollution, justice in 

relationships ... The ripples on the water 

formed many concentric circles of 

common concern. 

Today the issues around peacemaking 

and spirituality are no less stark 

and the focus is no less hot. Spirituality 

has become a buzz word and for many it 

still indicates an integration of our faith 

with our everyday action. But in the 

post-Cold War. post-Greenham, post 

mass CND rallies days when the biggest 

single issue is how to care for the 

hounds that chase the fox, and when 

the voice of Tony Benn is the one we 

hear like a worthy but weary blast from 

the past, condemning the use of 

force(s) in the Gulf, then I have to 

know: who cares about spirituality and 

peace-making? 

On a cold, blue-skied day in January 

seven of us met at Woodbrooke College 

in Birmingham to share our thoughts on 

and experiences of 'Spirituality and 

Peace-Making'. This is what we came 

up with: spirituality is a concept, like 

'peace-making', which needs to be 

reclaimed. lt indicates a passionate way 

of life, including both joy and suffering, 

working towards abundant life and 

living. Spirituality is about power. when 

it is the kind of 'power-with'(empowerment) 

not 'power-over' that Jesus spoke 

of . Spirituality describes that place of 

truth, pain and discomfort where we 

can do no other than act. 

We identified a number of tensions 

inherent in living out a peace-making 

spirituality. The tension between reflection 

and action, when we struggle to 

find growth in the continual flipping 

between silent meditative prayer and 

getting our hands dirty. The tension 

moveanGnt 14 

between being an individual and being 

part of an institution when we feel 

swamped by 'the common mind' and 

invisible in 'the common structure', yet 

want to belong to a community. The 

tension between fun and duty when we 

take ourselves and our cause so 

seriously that we cannot relax, and 

when we forget that Jesus had a sense 

of humour. The tension between church 

and peace when so many of our 

churches have colluded with the powers 

of war and aggression while maintaining 

a commitment to Jesus, the non-violent 

peacemaker. And finally, the tension 

between'one-ness' and'brokenness'. 

This last tension was the thread 

which ran through our whole conversation. 

When war, violence, injustice and 

fighting occur we are witnessing a 

breaking of the connection between 

ourselves and the Gospel message of 

non-violence. lt is our task as peacemakers 

to SplRITUALlTy 

:";il*"J DEscRrBEs rHAr 

continually PTACE OF TRUTH 

to this AND pAlN 

i""?li""l',li: wHERE lYE cAN 

ness. Where DO NO OTHER 

there is 

THAITI ACT. 

brokenness, 

we are called to one-ness. And yet we 

are faced with the question: 'how can 

we recognise the vulnerability and 

brokenness of the world if we deny this 

same vulnerability within ourselves?' 

To be peace-makers we must first be 

at peace with ourselves, with our own 

brokenness. The search for this inner 

peace is a lifetime journey. Along the 

way we need guidance, comfort, 

challenge, support and opportunities to 

explore. To find this we may turn to 

spiritual leaders, companions, those who 

are wiser than us, those who have been 

on the path for some time; we may even 

turn to the church. ln turning out for 

help we are offering our own inner 

vulnerability as a gift to our spiritual 

leaders. our churches, our holy and 

sacred places. lt is in this turning, and in 

an adequate and compassionate response 

to our own inner vulnerability, that hope 

for a truly integrated, world-reforming 

spirituality of peace-making lies. @ 

Ruth Harvey is the director of the CGBI 

Ecumenical Spirituality Project, with 

offices in Milton Keynes and Penrith

He was a Western student who went to Lahore and taught for a yean Ten years on, Jonathan 

ldle returns to Pakistan and India and reflects on the changes that have taken place both there 

and inside himself. 

Taken Fo? 

Granted 

n Nagpur Station at 5.OOam 

Rosie wondered if anyone 

would remember her ten years 

on, and would they care that 

she'd come back to see them? We 

needn't have worried; by lunchtime the 

Bishop had interrupted a staff meeting 

just to give us tea, and his secretary 

was organising our timetable. After 

that our main concern was being so 

warmly welcomed that we had no time 

for ourselves, attending a 'welcome 

dance' and hastily-arranged visits to 

development projects as if we were 

some kind of celebrity. 

I had had similar concerns arriving in 

Pakistan-who would still be around, 

and would it feel awkward to turn up 

ten years after losing touch? lt was in 

fact exhilarating to meet my closest 

friends there. the school servants. They 

were equally delighted, and not only 

invited us to their homes to eat, but 

gave us presents because l'd got 

married since l'd last seen them. 

We were both returning after ten 

years-l had come to show Rosie 

Pakistan and she wanted to show me 

lndia. We both wanted to see people 

and places we had memories 

of 

-memories all the more intense as 

she had ended our relationship when we 

came back, but seven years later we'd 

got married. We also wanted to see how 

our own reactions would be different 

this time. As time went on it was those 

reactions that most fascinated us. lt 

was exciting to note how much I had 

changed, by noting such intense and 

different reactions to what we were 

experiencing. 

We didn't simply enjoy the 

overwhelming welcome from friends; we 

went back to our guest-house and 

discussed the limits of cross-cultural 

friendship and the nature of intimacy. 

We discussed the dynamics of power 

and the intrusion of wealth and poverty 

into relationships. We found, most days, 

a quick link between our experiences 

that day and the big questions of life. 

Take poverty and our reaction 

to it. Mark Tully's answer when 

asked how he copes with 

poverty is "l don't have to. The 

poor do". An equally striking 

answer might be "The same as 

we cope with the poverty in 

Britain". Even the word 

'poverty' is too abstract and 

sanitised for the destitution 

which we find unimaginable 

but which is normality for 

millions; Tully's answer hints 

at the thoughtless and 

abstract ease of the 

question. My answer 

implies that if we don't 

notice poverty till we reach 

lndia we have closed our 

Eating cake in a posh hotel 

and then walking past a 

beggar feels uncomfortable, 

but it is logically no worse 

than eating cake when we 

can't see the beggar. 

whether in Britain or lndia. 

We all do this every day, 

but it feels worse when the 

beggars are more 

numerous or their situation 

more extreme. 

But who is poor? 

Poverty is relative, and 

closely related to power 

So whilst in some ways 

we are richer-more 

advantaged 

-than most 

of those we met, in 

other ways there are 

people whose monthly 

wage I could drop out of 

fnovcmsnt 15 

my pocket and not notice, but who are 

no poorer than me in terms of their 

status and access to what their 

society offers. I got tired of 

being asked

for money-whether by beggars, street 

sellers or charitable causes. I felt they 

just saw a white skin as a pot of money 

to be tapped - reducing us to symbols of 

Western wealth rather than individual 

human beings. But I found myself doing 

the same in reverse-seeing stall-holders 

and rickshaw drivers as needing our 

generosity simply because, well, here 

we are in lndia. So we gave some fairly 

arbitrary and patronising tips out while 

we worked out the pros and cons. 

We were also well aware that we 

had plenty of money but not much time, 

so why not make use of the fact that 

othrs had plenty of time but not much 

money. We were quite happy to pay 

people to queue for our train tickets 

while we went sightseeing. This also 

involved more trust than the average 

tourist experiencg as we handed over 

cash up front to people we'd only just 

met. (And who didn't let us down.) This 

was very different to ten years ago, 

when I got a buzz from doing everything 

as cheaply as possible. l'd gloat to 

myself 

-l 

bet not many Europeans came 

to the grubby roadside curry stall or tea 

shop where I felt at home, and I 

certainly wouldn't pay f2.OO for a 

comfortable bus journey when you 

For example, we found 

churches more frustrating 

than we do in Britain, 

although the frustrations 

were largely the same. Here 

it felt somehow less excusable 

because the form of 

worship was not even 

indigenous, but learnt 

from a proselytising 

foreign church which 

inseparably wrapped the 

central tenets of faith in 

their own cultural 

expression of them. ln a 

short stay we could not 

build up the trusting 

relationships which 

make it possible to 

probe critically and aloud, 

so we just came away and ranted to 

each other. What is the church for? 

Does it have a different purpose as a 

minority religion and in a place with the 

spiritual heritage of lndo-Pakistan? 

Liturgy and worship did not seem to be 

informed by struggling with such 

questions. at least from our limited 

experience of worship. I was disappointed 

that worship is based more on 

the middle-of-the-road Anglical worship 

],IOST DAYS tYE HAD AN INTEI{SE 

DISCUSSION OR TWO ON THE 

VARIOUS TOPICS YOU CAN 

IGNORE IN BRITAII'I BUT HERE 

TYERE IN YOUR FACE ON EVERY 

STREET 

could get a cramped and bumpy one for 

€1.50 that only took an hour longer! 

I hadn't quite got out of the habit. 

More than once I'd haggle a price 

downwards and then get to know the 

person and pay up to the original asking 

price. And this was partly because we 

assumed that because this is Pakistan, 

they must need our generosity. But for 

all we know they are doing fine. Some 

recipients were certainly taken aback; 

and irve might also have made it harder 

for other whites by giving the impression 

that yes, we'are so rich we can pay 

over the odds. 

So we reflected on poverty. ln fact, we 

had brought several books in preparation 

for long journeys and waiting for 

bureaucratic procedures, but we hardly 

read any of them. Most days we had an 

intense discussion or two on the various 

topics you can ignore in Britain but here 

were in your face on every street: 

poverty, God, organised religion, gender, 

world history, and personal growth. We 

then wondered why we thought about 

all this so much less in Britain. 

which the British brought over than on 

the cultural, spiritual and symbolic tradition 

of the sub-continent. 

At one lndian Catholic church we 

experienced lndian music, scents, 

decoration and symbolism as the setting 

for an unambiguously Christian sacramental 

liturgy. This was a moving and 

beautiful inaugural service for the new 

building and although they don't do all 

that every week it was clearly the norm 

to have an indigenous style of liturgy, 

which contrasted with some very British 

services elsewhere. lt was also 

disturbed by 20 minutes of fireworks 

outside when lndia hit the winning runs 

in a thrilling cricket final. To say I didn't 

mind missing it on TV is high praise for 

the service. 

I found myself wondering if there 

was any point in having a church, in a 

country dominated by other religion(s). 

After all, Jesus came not to start a new 

religion but to inspire people who 

already had a faith to follow it more 

genuinely (among other things). Then 

logically if Jesus came to Pakistan he 

movemgnt 16 

would encourage 

people to be better Muslims, and in 

lndia to be better Sikhs and Hindus. 

Ultimately, there is no need for 

Christianity-only for a liberation of the 

kind Jesus preached in First Century 

Jewish Palestine, and which compares 

to the mission of the first Gurus of 

Sikhism, and of Mohammed. 

But who am I to say how lndian and 

Pakistani churches should run 

themselves? I draw back from doing so 

without the context of a two-way 

relationship of respect. And yet 

outsiders sometimes make the most 

telling observers, whether of a church, 

an organisation or a culture. I hope I will 

listen harder to hear the reflections of 

outsiders when I have the chance. 

More to the point, if these are the 

questions I ask after four weeks abroad, 

after a mere four church services. what 

questions am I asking of the church I 

claim long-term membership of? How 

relevant to British life is our church and 

our worship? Do we know and agree on 

what the church is for? And what am I 

doing about it? The answer to all these 

questions is clearly not enough, if I am so 

struck by the urgency of such questions 

in someone else's church. 

So if it is shocking that the only 

woman in the pastor's meeting served the 

tea and was washing up while we prayed; 

that one of the three grand pianos in 

Lahore has nobody who can play it, but is 

merely a status symbol; and that our 

friends had to build their own houses but 

could only do so after bribing the 

authorities, that tells me not that we 

were visiting a sexist and corrupt country, 

but that sexism and corruption survive 

when they are taken for granted. And the 

moral for me is not to tut tut at the way 

'these people' do things, but to look differently 

at the corruption and sexism that I 

take for granted daily in Britain. E 

Jonathan ldle is a youth worker in Hackney

Postcard From the 

Fringes 

have just returned from Lithuania 

where I was attending a meeting at 

the European Youth Form and visiting 

the fledgling SCM in Vilnius. 

Contemporary Lithuania is an intriguing 

and beautiful country; in my conversations 

with the SCMers I met there I 

became aware of the strong sense of 

civic and cultural identity that has flourished 

in this small Baltic state since it 

gained its independence from the Soviet 

Union in 1991 . 

Lithuania played a decisive role in 

the break-up of the Soviet Union and 

like many other former Soviet states, its 

people have had a lot of readjusting to 

do. The transition to social democracy 

has had its share of problems, but I was 

bowled over by the commitment of the 

Lithuanians I met to play a part in 

rebuilding their society as a fair, democratic 

and inclusive one. 

One of the first things I noticed 

about Vilnius is that it is a city full of 

churches. However, during the Soviet 

era many of Vilnius's most beautiful and 

anci.ent churches were turned into sport 

centres or art galleries. Now many of 

these fine buildiqgs are being restored 

to their former glories and original 

purposes. Walking around the streets I 

couldn't fail to be struck by the eclectic 

mixture of architectural influences-a 

testimony to the city's rich and varied 

cultural and religious diversity. The 

largest proportion of Christians is 

Roman Catholic, but Lithuania also has 

significant Russian Orthodox and 

Lutheran communities. The historical 

process by which Lithuania has come to 

have such an ethnic and religious mix 

does not really make happy reading and 

provides plenty of scope for potential 

conflict. 

ln many parts of Europe (indeed, 

here within the British state) the legacy 

of troubled histories-displaced persons, 

religious and ethnic discrimination. 

economic disparities, remote political 

eilidh urhiteford 

thinkpiece 

control-has been, at best, the maintenance 

of deep-rooted resentments and, 

at worst, the eruption of organised 

violence. Yet it seems that Lithuania has 

fared better than most in its attempts to 

acknowledge and overcome the traditionally 

harboured resentments that 

have existed between communities. 

But what does all this have to do 

with us? Lithuania is a long way away, 

THE MOST POWERFUL THIHG I 

]IIOTICED TYAS THAT THE 

LITHUANIAHS WHO DIED AS A 

RESUTT OF THE MO]'IENTOUS 

EVEilTS OF I99 I WERE AGED 

BETWEE]T I8 AND 2I YEARS. IN 

oTHER TYORDS, lT wAS YOUNG 

PEOPLE WHO ACTED TO LIBERATE 

THEIR COUNTRY. 

after all. The most powerful thing I 

noticed in Lithuania was that young 

people actually seemed to feel part of 

their society-there was no ghetto of 

youth politics or youth culture to be 

found. As the Speaker of the Lithuanian 

Parliament has pointed out, almost all 

the Lithuanians who died as a result of 

the momentous events of 1991 were 

aged between 1 8 and 21 years. ln other 

words, it was young people who acted 

to liberate and re-create their country. 

It saddens me that so many young 

people in Western Europe have become 

so deeply alienated from the civic values 

that, at least in the case of Lithuania, 

have launched one small Baltic nation 

on a road to positive transformation. 

l've never subscribed to the view that 

young people today are more lazy, 

apathetic or selfish than earlier generations, 

but when I find myself identifying 

with characters in Trainspotting ot 

Generation X or turning up Alanis 

Morrisette, I have to ask myself "what's 

gone wrong?" 

I guess that if you're reading 

Movement you are probably a person 

who is also writing letters for Amnesty 

lnternational, or collecting signatures for 

Jubilee 2000, or making soup in a soup 

kitchen, hanging out at a peace camp, 

or whatever. But why do so many 

people who share a commitment to a 

just and peaceful world feel unable to 

participate and feel themselves on the 

fringe of society? Why have such activities 

been marginalised from the 

mainstream of public life? 

Compared to the great bulk of 

humanity, we enjoy a high level of rights 

and privileges in this part of the world, 

including the freedom to make a fuss 

about things we don't like. We're able to 

make lifestyle choices that simply aren't 

open to young men & women in other 

places. Arguably, the most precious 

consequence of this personal liberty is 

that our society cares less about 

someone's colour, ethnicity, class, 

religion, sexual orientation, gender or 

living arrangements than in the past. Yet 

l'm afraid I have a nagging doubt that 

behind this liberal fagade lurks a less 

palatable symptom of our latetwentieth 

century cultural malaise 

and loss of civil identity: maybe the 

truth is that we just care less, full 

stop. 

What is certainly true is that we in 

the West could learn a great deal from 

the emerging democracies of Eastern 

and Central Europe; however, they too, 

as they embrace Western political and 

economic models might be well advised 

to exercise some caution, heeding the 

harsher lessons learnt in the West about 

the consequences of creating a young, 

alienated populace. I can only wish the 

Lithuanians well in their continued 

efforts to forge a vital and inclusive 

sense of cultural identity and look on 

with not a little envy. @ 

Eilidh Whiteford has just received her 

doctorate in Scottish Literature. She is 

the Ghair of the European Region of the 

World Student Christian Federation 

movgmgnt 17

The Royal shakespeare companv's recent adaptation of the medieval mysterv plavs, Tne 

Mvsteries, retells the Biblical stories in radical new wavs. Graeme Burk spoke with writer 

Edward Kemp about his work on this project, and how it has changed his own thoughts 

uilding The 

D 

D 

ysteries 

Getting my tickets lor The 

Mysteries, the Royal 

Shakespeare Company's 

retelling of the medieval 

mystery plays, I had an experience akin 

to having the Riot Act read aloud. The 

friendly person at the Barbican's box 

office first said to me: "You should be 

aware that the performance is six hours 

with two intervals". Alright. Then: "The 

text has been radically changed from 

the source material so it's very 

different." Fine. "There's nudity, 

vulgarity and some swearing." Okay. 

Finally: "and Jesus doesn't get 

resurrected at the end, so if you are of 

strong beliefs you may be offended." 

ln spite of this rather daunting 

preamble (which is, strictly speaking, 

not even accurate: there is a resurrection 

at the end), and in spite of its 

appropriately Biblical length, Ihe 

Mysteries proved to be a phenomenal 

theatrical experience. People looking for 

a Sunday school pageant retelling of the 

Bible (or, indeed, a presentation of the 

medieval mystery plays) will come away 

disappointed. What this RSC production 

managed to do was strip away the 

Biblical stories to their basic, mythic, core 

and retell the basic story in a powerful. 

effective way. /see Sidebar, opposite) 

"What we shared was a fascination 

with Jesus, as a historical, totemic and 

religious figure,"'explains Edward Kemp. 

Kemp was initially brought onto the 

project as a "dramaturg" (a writer who 

basically adapts other's work) but found 

over two years that his role expanded, 

to the point where the most accurate 

billing for the script has been "adapted 

from the medieval mystery plays, with 

additional material from the Bible the 

Ou'ran, the works of Dostoyevsky and 

Bulgakov and with additional writing by 

Edward Kemp." 

The road to this began in 1996 

when Katie Mitchell, the artistic director 

of the RSC's The Other Place in 

Stratford conceived of a season of pre- 

Shakesperian plays which included the 

medieval mystery plays and Everyman. 

lnitially choosing to do an amalgam 

of the four different English cycles, 

Kemp set to adapting the work, but as it 

progressed it was clear that the original 

source material was not working as well 

as had been expected, in part due to the 

polemical origins. "We kept saying 'this 

material is 

anti- 

Semitic, 

we'll have 

to do 

something 

about 

that' or 

'that 

material is 

misogynist, 

we'll 

have to do 

something 

about 

that'and 

we 

seemed to 

be further 

and 

further 

from the 

medievals 

and with 

every turning the medievalness, which 

once seemed so charming and 

delightful, was actually becoming a real 

barrier. " 

After infusing the text with new 

material-mostly from the Biblical text 

itself but written in rhyming verse-a 

new dynamic to the project came when 

it came to rehearsals. "We had this 

extraordinary rehearsal period where we 

found that the actors had come on the 

same journey as we did...and so all the 

discussions about the devil and evil 

movement 18 

came with the rehearsal process. We 

spent a lot of time discussing the 

theology of the piece, which was 

exciting. " 

The production opened in Stratford 

in 1997 to favourable reviews, but there 

were still frustrations according to Kemp 

"What we began to discover was 

that the debates we had in the 

rehearsal room were much more 

dynamic and felt much more of our 

time than what was happening on 

stage." ln moving the play to 

London this winter, the text was 

completely rewritten in the hopes of 

reflecting these debates. 

Key to this was a shift to contemporary 

language. "ln some ways, in 

Stratford, we asked difficult 

questions, and put them on stage 

but because it was couched in the 

old language and was rather austere 

and beautiful, people received it as 

something which had not changed.

"So unless one clranged the 

language unless one deployed slrock 

tactics by having Peter swearir-rg and 

rluggirrg Jesus-- unless people canre at 

these stories fronr more oblique angles, 

people sir-nply wouldn't listerr. " 

Part of the process of getting people 

to listen has been to bring the stories 

back to their archetypal roots. The 

stories that ur.rfold throughout lhe 

Mysteries do not take place in ancient 

Palestine br-rt rather a war torn 

lar-rdscape. Tl.ris enables the story to be 

retained in a mythic place Jr-rdea but 

also our owr-r time-and seems appro 

priate given the bloody conflicts which act 

as a backdrop to nruch of the Bible, 

something with which Kemp colrcurs. "Tlre 

nloment one yoLr go into a war zone you 

acl.rieve sornething rnythic," he explains. 

"What connects the Old Testanrent and the 

New Gstanrent as human l-ristory together 

is the l.ristory of war." 

ln adaptlng the New Testanrent, a 

decision was made to reexanrine the 

stories of Jesr-rs for their rlythic qualities 

rather than trying a straightforward 

historical interpretation, "fhe number of 

verifiable I'ristorical facts about Jesus 

are about as rrany as Shal

-t 

quickios 

llVhat's totr fanouite pocsesll&rt 

My imagination 

What are you reading at the 

moment? 

Proust, Faulkner's Collected 

Short Stories, Bulgakov's 

The Master & Margarila, 

Julia Cameron's The Artist's 

Way, Muriel Rtrkeyser's lhe 

Life of Poetry, last week's 

newspapers ... 

lrllhat's ptr favourite fimi$ay? 

Paris, Texas ! The Cherry 

Orchard 

How do you relax? 

By working - the curse of 

letting your hobby become 

your lob 

What do you most like about 

yourself? 

My bemusement 

What do 

you most 

dislike about 

yourself? 

My envy 

What's your 

favourite 

word? 

Besotted 

ll you could be someone 

else who would you be7 

Picasso 

Wh€n tr you last cry? 

Last Sunday 

What's your favourite joumey? Wtlat ae yan sca€d d? 

Anywhere by plane Not lulfillirrg my potenlial 

more than you get frorn Dennis Potter's 

Son of Man or Jesus Christ Superstar." 

And yet, there are some striking 

reinterpretation of other figures in 

Christiar.r iconography.. Satarr in lhe 

Mysteries is simply than a nressenger 

angel and as such neutral in his affairs 

with humanity. This, explains Kemp, 

carne out of a reading of the Biblical 

text itself . "lf you ransack the Old 

Testament you find that Satan and the 

Devil are barely there at all, which 

seemed to us to be a bit interesting. 

"So what began as a bit of biblical 

scl.rolarship to remove the devil then 

became a moral issue- there is no 

longer a character in this story on 

whom one can blame anythit'rg. 

ln the absence of any character to 

blame, the focus of The Mysteries turns 

towards humanity and their own cruelty. 

The stories of the Old Testament-an 

expansion of the medievals, who relied 

only on Genesis- are stripped of any 

triumphalism whatsoever. The world falls 

into greater disarray due to human choice. 

Edward states that the play takes this 

theme from Liberation Theology: "God 

creatbd the world and it was good. lf it's 

not 

,W 

right, that is creation's fault and duty 

to fix it." 

hat's been exciting 

about the project 

overall and important 

about the project is 

to say 'these are the stories of our 

culture'. Even if you don't know the 

story of Abral.ram and lsaac-and it's 

fascinating to know the number of 

people who don't know that story who 

come out-that story of a father sacrificing 

a son in that way has informed 

our literature over and over again. That 

Descdbe a recurring dream 

that you have 

One day we will all come lo 

our senses 

What do you never miss on 

TV? 

A long list of American silcoms 

What music do you listen to 

most? 

This week - Ani Di Franco, 

The Divine Comedy. Afro- 

Cuban Allstars; rrext week - 

Janacek, New Order, Mozart 

and Professor Longhair 

What pet hates do you haveT 

Theatre critics 

What would your motto for 

living be? 

When shall we live. iJ r-tot 

now? 

was the fascinatir.rg thirrg abor.rt going 

back into the history bit of the Old 

Testament if you haven't done it before. 

There are er.rtire Shakespeare history 

plays lyirrg around in the books of Kings 

and Samuel. lf we lraven't gotterl it 

directly frorn the source, we've gotten it 

from a wlrole lot of other places. lt 

seems to me we have to keep tl-rese 

stories alive ir-r the same way the Greeks 

knew you had to keep retelling the rnyths." 

And yet the reaction to tlre London 

production oI The Mysteries has 

indicated sonre resistance 

- at least on 

the part of some critics and others 

{even, as my discr,rssion getting tickets 

revealed, within the RSC itself) towards 

retelling the Christian mytl.rs. "People l.rave 

no trouble when doing this with someone 

else's culture and its terribly nice," 

observes Kemp, "but somehow when you 

do it to our culture, you discover that 

people really don't want it to change." 

"So the fact that we've tried to say 

'look these stories can be living, these 

stories can be alive' and what one 

discovers is that in this'Christian' 

country there are lruge numbers of intelligent 

people who think it's really important 

that Christianity doesn't change." 

This is something which doesn't 

surprise Kemp. "l think most of us have 

a sort of cardboard box which is called 

'What I believe' which somewhere 

towards the end of adolescence we shut 

up, put some string around it and put it 

on the shelf somewhere and it only ever 

comes down if we encounter some kind 

of a life crisis. This is something which 

had to be revisited by all who have 

been involved in The Mysteries. 

"What all of us had to do in this 

project was take that cardboard box 

out and see what was in it. And one of 

fnovemcnt 20 

the thirrgs we discovered during the 

process of doing that was all the sort of 

tl'rings yor-r thought yor-t could accept jLlst 

falls apart. " 

And what about Edward's owtt 

cardboard box? "l don't tl'rirrk the 

cardboard box is going bacl< ot.t the top 

shelf for quite some tinre and it feels 

like I have the contents spread around 

nry living roorr. I believe the process of 

nroving Ithe play] to London has made 

nre ever nrore Clrristian in that l'm rnore 

and nrore deeply fascir-rated by Jesr:s 

Christ than ever before. The overall 

project, and again it going to London, 

has rnade me more atheist, which is to 

me a process that began sorne years 

back, br-rt I sirnply realised tlrat l'd redis 

covered rry spiritual journey where I 

sirlply no longer rreeded tlre word 

'God'. I was very happy for other people 

to use the word 'God', br-rt to rne the 

word 'God' was a barrier to further 

exploration. So I kind of surrendered the 

word 'God', and tl.re project has 

constantly reaffirllred for nre persorrally 

to do that. 

"l can't at the nroment base a 

morality or-rtside rnyself , outside 

creatiorr. lcan't base nrorality on a 

creator. I don't yet l-rave a solution to 

how you create a morality based on 

creatior-r, because orre inevitably gets 

back to genetics and genetics doesn't 

really teach one muclr more than the 

fact that rnorality may be useful 

because it will keep the race from 

wiping itself out and l'm not sure if 

that's a very good basis of rnorality. So 

it's incredibly sharpened my interest in 

nroral questions. Tlre cardboard box is 

out and the contents are lyir-rg around 

the livir.rg room and it's made me mucl.t 

less morally relativist than I used to be. I 

find myself agreeing with people who 

talk about responsibilities rather than 

rights, which suddenly makes me step 

back and wonder if l've become my 

grandfather. " 

Theatre is an art form tlrat, perhaps 

like no other, can stimulate and 

challenge thought. That a play is 

capable of making its audience reflect 

on issues related to freedom, morality, 

cosmology and religion and make its 

creators do so as well is an impressive 

feat. The paradox of the RSC's production 

of The Mysteries is that it is a 

sensitive, powerful and thoughtful play 

that defies all expectations, particularly 

those given at the point of sale by the 

RSC itself . Which is a shame, as rather 

than offending people of strong belief , it 

should do the opposite. At its best, Ihe 

Mysteries f ulf ills Edward Kemp's belief 

tl.rat "Every single scene in this play is 

based on the core of how one can 

dramatise Jesus' teaching." @ 

Graeme Burk is editor of Movement

Robert Jones samples the gospel-influenced stylings of Nick Lowe's Dig MV Mood 

Struggle, American Style 

NICK LOWE - DIG MY MOOD 

Produced by Nick Lowe and Neil 

Brockbank 

Demon Records 

first thing one notices on 

7he 

I 

hearing Nick Lowe's new disc is 

how rooted in American musical 

I tradition it is. lndeed, Lowe 

covers a lot of ground here. from Tin Pan 

Alley jazz balladry, Sixties soul, hardbitten 

folk. right down to full-on 

Nashville country. This is a "down 

home" record, a comfort record, not 

because it is not sophisticated in many 

places, but because it is obvious that 

the man who has crafted these songs is 

obviously in love with the legacy of 

American popular music which is 

celebrated on Dig My Mood As the 

album progresses, one can almost 

imagine driving down a motorway, 

windows rolled down, with these 

sounds flowing out of a car radio. Lowe 

carries the mantle of great American 

singers such as Nat King Cole, Sam 

Cooke and Johnny Cash with equal 

dexterity and in these traditions, Lowe 

doesn't seem like an intruder due largely 

to his obvious enthusiasm. Despite the 

sombre shading which goes to make the 

disc so rich in atmosphere, he really 

sounds like he's having a good time. 

Another credit to this collection is 

Lowe's seemingly God-given gift of 

being able to hear the essence of a 

musical style and being subsequently 

able to construct a sound around his 

mainly original compositions without 

compromising the basic spirit of the 

genre in which he is working. His many 

years at Stiff Records and his tenure as 

Elvis Costello's most revered producer 

have seasoned his own mastery of 

musical style. . 

ln contrast to this enthusiasm of 

classic American music is the undertones 

of loss, despair and loneliness 

which, on some tracks, seem to 

transcend the expectation that these 

elements are a convention of style. lt 

would not be out of the ordinary to 

expect despair in a country song such 

as the album's closing track, Lowe's 

cover of lvory Joe Hunter's "Cold Grey 

Light of Dawn" which starts with "That 

old alarm clock gives a yell/ Starting 

another day in Hell/Facing a world I 

can't face with you gone". The lyric is a 

model of country traditions and demonstrates 

Lowe's understanding of how 

country songs are constructed and best 

presented. lt is interesting to contrast 

this with Lowe's own, "l Must Be 

Getting Over You", the track which 

precedes it. ln this song, also a country 

song, the 

singer decides 

" I must be 

getting over 

you/ Because 

today I saw 

the bluebird at 

my window.../l 

saw the sun 

breaking 

through my 

window", 

these lines of 

hope also 

suggest a 

certain sense 

of tragedy; the 

singer doesn't 

sing to a 

lrrcK r0wE 

departed lover so much as he sings the 

song to himself as a way of getting over 

a cherished life once shared with 

someone who is palpably absent. 

The convention of lost love is 

explored on many tracks here, from the 

Sam Cooke-esque "Lonesome Reverie" 

to the equally soulful "What Lack of 

Love Has Done" and go to cast Lowe as 

the scarred troubadour, who seeks 

solace in singing about his fear of love 

and what it can do to someone who 

surrenders to it. lt is portrayed as 

something which can cause misery 

("Love's a hurting thing/ For I know it to 

be true") yet also it is seen as a 

motivating force, best embodied on the 

jazzy "You lnspire Me" as the singer 

proclaims "The road is long/ And it 

winds through the night/ But when 

you're near/ You let there be light" to an 

accompaniment of shimmering vibes, 

lyrical piano and rich backing vocals. 

The language here is religious and it is 

part of a trend which Lowe furthers 

thorough out the album; the importance 

of the spiritual and yet, its equally 

troublesome elusivity. 

The waning spirituality which 

features in many of these songs can be 

best seen in the Johnny Cash-inspired 

movemsnt 21 

folk song "Man That I've Become" 

which portrays a good man who has 

become an outcast to everybody 

including himself, because he has 

become spent by too much living in a 

harsh world. The singer explains that " 

He can't go to church/ 'Cause his faith's 

all gone/ The sweet singing of the choir/ 

Nothing but a 

row". The gospelinflected 

"High on 

a Hilltop" 

describes a futile 

search for earthly 

spiritual fulfillment 

as something 

which is, simply, 

"far away". ln this 

vein, the grimmest 

track on the album 

is Henry 

McCullough's 

"Failed Christian" 

because of the 

underlying bitterness 

which runs 

through the song's 

spare, but direct lyrics "l'm a failed 

Christian/ And if I'm going under/ Than 

you're coming with me/ That much I 

can tell". Again, it must be mentioned 

that many of the themes explored here 

are conventional; American music has 

been born out of these kinds of spiritual 

struggles, from the gospel music of 

American southern churches which gave 

birth to the blues and to soul, to the 

tent-meeting hymns which evolved into 

modern country music. However, Lowe 

has captured both the essence of this 

music and created an emotional subtext 

as well, so we can see that these kinds 

of sentiments are still relevant to human 

experience and are relevant within the 

confines of popular song. 

Dig My Mood remains to be a 

puzzling title. ls this an invitation to mine 

the troubled soul of the artist himself, or 

is it merely to draw attention to the eclectic 

range of style and voices which Lowe 

employs? Perhaps it is enough that we are 

left with a solid collection of songs, well 

crafted originals and well chosen covers, by 

an artist who has a true love for music and 

musicians who have come before him. E 

Robert Jones is a writer and poet based 

in London

i 

Tim woodcock examines Steven Spielberg's historical epic, Amistad 

Whitewashing History 

AMISTAD 

Directed by Steven Spielberg 

Starring Djimon Hounsou, Anthony 

Hopkins, Matthew McConaughey, Pete 

Postlethwaite 

WHj,lfitfit,,,*$i'i 

Something like Amistad: it has 

compelling cinematography; a very 

competent cast; beautiful vignettes; a 

provocative and moving story, told with 

intelligence and compassion. Yet it 

doesn't satisfy. Hollywood can turn 

worthy themes into worthless 

tirades-but that is not the problem 

here. Nor is it caught in arty obscurity or 

the sludge of historical pedantry. Neither 

is it cheesy. idealised, simplistic or any 

those other usual celluloid pit-falls. 

Amistad simply misses the mark. 

Some background: Amistad is the 

Spanish name of a ship that mutinied 

during a voyage to the United States. lt 

is 1839, a particular moment in history: 

by now slave trading is illegal, unless 

they are 'born slaves' on a plantation. 

The plot goes forwards and backwards: 

what in legal terms should happen to 

this human cargo? And who are they, 

and where did they come from? 

Some would argue that Amistad is a 

white man's black film and there is 

some truth in this: a friend told me of 

standing in a cinema queue behind a 

black woman who said, "Steven 

Speilberg is going to tell us about 

ourselves again." lt would be an utterly 

different film if directed by Spike Lee. 

Amistad is more interested in apologies 

than empowerment; and apologies 

rather than repentance. Despite the 

numerous black'actors there are only 

three proper black characters and 

Cinque is the only fleshed-out 

slave-the rest are a huddle of pity, a 

disputed human cargo, an embarrassment 

for New World Americans and 

Spanish Merchants. The film's subject is 

as much the decline of a trade as the 

liberation of a race. 

Allow me to pick out three problems 

that muddle this potentially earthshattering 

film. The first one perhaps 

explains the other two: with 

Schindler's l/sf (the only comparable 

Spielberg film) there was Thomas 

Keneally's novel to whip the historical 

material into shape, to craft a coherent 

story by selecting and dramatising 

history. Here direct transfer of history 

onto screen leads to too many strands 

of plot, too many characters and 

multiple half-baked heroes. Whereas 

Oskar Schindler the "scoundrel-saint" 

was clearly the focus-in Amistad, who 

or what is? The lawyer Baldwin... the 

string-pulling politicians... the slaves? 

Where is it set? The courtroom... the 

boat from Africa...or Africa itself ? I 

honestly can't remember the sequence 

of the plot. 

Secondly, the Spanish speakers 

(although subtitled) are easily understood 

by their gestures; whereas the 

Africans' impenetrable speech is 

subtitled. putting a layer between them 

and us-and, yes, it is that explicit. The 

Africans are often shown as ignoble 

savages; as irredeemably foreign. lt was 

courageous to make language into a 

barrier. but it makes it hard to follow: a less 

ambitious film would have put the most 

eloquent speeches into a black mouth. 

The particularity of the legal case 

greatly saps the film's potential 

power-What should be done with 

illegally obtained goods (albeit human 

beings) when lost at sea? Under which 

loophole of which piece of legislation? 

Baldwin is a brilliant lawyer who 

specialises in property law There is a 

climactic court case in which the slaves 

gain their freedom-then a tedious 

movcmcnt 22 

appeal so Anthony Hopkins can do his 

stuff . The fidelity to historical accuracy 

blunts the dramatic edge. Despite 

Amistad having a constellation of 

virtues there is an underlying narrative 

incompetence. 

This film oscillates between the 

individual circumstances and Big 

Themes. rather than demonstrating one 

through the other. "To make a universal 

point one must begin with the 

parochial." lt is a marvellous truth of 

storytelling-and for me a key to understanding 

what the incarnation is about. 

The crucial scene for any Christian 

engagement with the film is when one 

of the slaves flicks through the 

engraved pictures in a Bible, 

constructing his version of what is 

going on: he identifies with 'a race full 

of suffering' and then sees, 'when He 

was born everything changed... he 

heals and protects... He walks across 

the sea... but he was captured and 

accused of a crime'. The slave has no 

idea who this man is. When 'He rose 

into the sky' the point of connection is 

lost-Ascension may as well be called 

The Day of Buggering Off. The 

problem comes here for us too: was 

Christ- another torn and beaten 

captive-only a prophet and a revolutionary? 

lf we say he is more, that is where 

faith begins. E 

Tim Woodcock is a student in Glasgow 

and the editor of Moziak, the magazine 

of the WSCF European Region

Graeme Burk puts stephen May's examination of christianity and science fiction stardust and 

Ashes under spectral analysis... 

The Truth ls Out Wherel 

STARDUST AND ASHES: A CHRISTIAN 

PERSPECTIVE ON SCIENCE FICTION 

Stephen May 

SPCK 

ne of the most interesting 

sermons I ever gave was during 

the first week of Lent a few 

years ago. The texts were the 

stories of the fall of humanity and the 

temptations of Jesus. Because it was 

the week of the Annual 

General Meeting I had 

five minutes to preach 

and, out of sheer 

desperation, I preached 

it in a Star Trek 

uniform. 

It wasn't that 

hard: the future 

presented in the early 

days of Star Trek: 

The Next Generation 

struggles for a 

prelapsarian perfection 

which has more 

or less has been 

abandoned in later 

years, and I asked 

why it's so hard to 

envision a perfect world in our culture. I 

also attempted to examine the various 

aspects of the fall and the temptations 

by reflecting these stories through our 

own cultural myths and it was surprising 

how compatible they were. 

I don't think this was just anorakishness 

on my part-although there is 

admittedly an element of that! Some 

time before I had attended a diocesan 

Synod and watched as clergy and laity 

(and even, I suspect, the episcopate) 

huriied to their cars to get home in time 

for the opening episode of the sixth 

season of Star Trek: The Next 

Generation and talked about it enthusiastically 

the next day. We may be 

Christians, but we are a part of a 

science fiction world. Science fiction is 

our culture's mythology and the stories 

of Picard, Kirk, Mulder, Scully and the 

inhabitants of Ringworld are as vital to 

us as Gilgamesh and Jason and the 

Argonauts were to the Mesopotamians 

and the Greeks. 

This is something which Stephen 

May admits in his thoughtful assessment 

of the science fiction genre, 

Stardust and Ashes. May has the 

unenviable task of producing the first 

work of serious scholarship to examine 

science fiction (or "sf" as it is known by 

aficianados, not "sci-fi" as SPCK consistently 

call it in their promotional 

material) from a Christian perspective. 

What emerges is a fascinating examination 

of Western thought from a novel 

point of view. 

For May, sf are stories humankind 

tell about themselves. and their hopes 

for self -transcendence 

('stardust') or their fears of 

self-destruction ('ashes'). ln 

examining sf, he looks at, 

and provides a lucid and 

intelligent critique of, the 

history of sf, examining the 

contributions of authors such 

as HG Wells, lsaac Asimov 

Philip K Dick. Ursula LeGuin 

and others. 

ln looking at the genre. May 

indicates some intriguing 

enamoured with rugged 

humanism, but at the same time a 

gnostic valuation of the mind. A genre 

with great emphasis on human achievement, 

but little consideration for 

ordinary humans. A genre filled with 

wonder, but also loneliness. 

ln setting the groundwork for a 

dialogue between sf and Christianity, 

May starts out with the premise that 

both share a common sense of wonderment 

with the universe. The bridge 

between "thy power throughout the 

universe displayed" to "space: the final 

frontier" is perhaps shorter than most 

would admit and it's an excellent 

starting point. lt's a disappointment that 

it is not developed better or further. 

movemsnt 23 

Rather than engaging and dialoguing 

with the texts that comprise sf , May 

decides to answer them instead, making 

preachy statments such is "lt is entirely 

understandable and natural that. in a 

genre which methodologically rejects 

the existence of God, one part of 

creation is given his role. But it is 

wrong." 

Which is a great pity. Much of 

Stardust and Ashes works effectively by 

standing back and examining what sf 

says about our culture and structuring 

that examination in a manner condusive 

for theological reflection. Providing a 

didactic commentary, however, is both 

boring and boorish. Sf is, if nothing else, 

a genre about diversity: it can encompass 

authors and points of view ranging 

from the fascistic Robert Heinlein to the 

eco-feminism of Ursula LeGuin. 

Engaging with such a pluralistic genre 

with a unilateral claim on truth seems 

ingenuous. lt's also unnecessary: at its 

best. sf, as a literary genre, credits the 

j'J'i'Ji3:""ffi11"r.". 

THE BRIDGE BETw=EN 

the obvious, but 

{5THY 

well-founded case POWER 

that sf's fascination 

with the "other" or THROUGHOUT THE 

:[?f"?ii":: ;T:',',,:"".,. u N I v E Rs E D I S P LAY E D' r 

[J:?i,;:.H:,Ib"l'ff To ('sPAcE: THE FINAL 

carr sagan,s book FRONTIERIt lS PERHAPS 

Contactl. He goes deeper 

than this, thoush, and rooks SHORT=R THAN MOST 

1fi"il",""J":,:Tx?l'jt!;." uf o u tD A D t*t I T 

reader with a great deal of intelligence. 

Likewise, May should credit his readers 

with the intelligence to draw their own 

conclusions. 

Stardust and Ashes should be 

applauded for looking at the mythology 

which is increasingly shaping our 

culture. lt is for the most part a 

delightful and intriguing look at those 

myths and what they say about 

ourselves but it is weakened by its 

failure to do what Captain Picard said 

best-"Engage". fit 

Movement editor Graeme Burk is a 

reviewer for the science fiction 

magazine Dreamwatch

I 

j ,.i.; 

. : li.:l 

i;..i 

, l' '! 

: t: 

itlri.l 

., . r-. :.1.'.1 

Dominic Heaney on Peter Vardy's introductory analysis of Sexual Ethics, The Puzzle of Sex 

Ptlzzling lt Over 

THE PUZZLE OF SEX 

Peter Vardy 

HarperCollins/ Fount 

t the outset it is worth stating 

that this book, one in 

HarperCollins"'Puzzle" series 

dealing with ethical and philosophical 

issues. and which claims to be 

"an outstanding introduction to the 

whole realm of human sexuality", would 

appear to have as its target audience A- 

level students as well as a wider general 

audience. Hence it is "popular theologycum-philosophy" 

for the chain 

bookstore from a chain book-publisher. 

But it is not so bad as this may imply 

to some. 

lndeed as an introduction to its topic, 

The Puzzle of Sex works reasonably 

well. Of greater concern are the facts 

that the text occasionally lapses into 

truism ("one cannot decide what the 

correct reaction should be to sexual 

issues as the dawning of the new 

millennium merely by referring to the 

understanding prevailing in ancient 

lsrael "), over-simplification, and 

indiscreetly over-provocative "insights" 

("Today any 17-year-old knows more 

about human bodies thant St. Augustine 

or St. Thomas Aquinas"). These relatively 

minor quibbles aside though. Vardy has 

succeeded in producing a book that 

manages to combine accessibilty of style 

with challenging content and a wide 

range of reference. 

The Puzzle of Sex is segmented into 

three sections, each followed by 

questions for (presumably classroom) 

discussion. An opening which appropriately 

cites historical and theological 

precedent for challenging conventionally 

accepted notions of religious truth and 

practice (referring to the books of Job 

and Jonah as well as to more recent 

controversies) is followed by the first 

section, entitled "How We Got Where 

We Are". Here Vardy provides a comprehensive 

and concise oversight of the Old 

Testament Hebrew and subsequent 

Christian attitudes and teachings 

relating to sexuality and sexual practice. 

This section is one of the highlights of 

the book, in which the evolution and 

implications of concepts such as 

Platonism and Natural Law are explained 

in terms clear to the lay reader. A significant 

gap may be found in the almost 

complete omission of Jewish teachings 

since the beginning of the Christian Era, 

but with regards to the teachings of this 

latter faith-in its Roman Catholic, 

Anglican, Protestant, and, as occurs all 

too rarely in British textbooks, Eastern 

Orthodox forms-Vardy is coherent and 

cogent, as he is with regard to pre- 

Christian Judaism. 

The middle section of the book, 

"Finding A New Way 

Forward", serves above all 

as a reasoned critique of 

some of the attitudes 

towards sex expressed in 

parts of the Christian 

communion. Above all 

the Thomist and Natural 

Law-inspired outlook 

that characterizes much 

of the stand of the 

Roman Catholic Church 

on matters sexual 

comes in for criticism, 

as do some of the 

more obvious consequences 

of society 

being male-dominated 

in structure 

and thought. The 

need for contextual 

understanding of doctrine 

\ 

J 

.J 

THE 

P,.... 

PTITR VARDY 

and practise is stated and restated, the 

logical adjunct to this argument being 

that there is much that Christianity 

might learn from modern phenomena 

such as psychology and psychotherapy. 

Vardy expresses the hope that the philosophical 

"advances" of the modern and 

post-modern dpoques would inform 

Christian and indeed post-Christian 

conceptions of morality. 

The closing unit, perhaps disingenuously 

named "Dealing With Current 

Problems" explores ethical and religious 

approaches towards what in fact are for 

the most part universal dilemmas of 

sexual ethics. The author is daring in his 

argumentation, going forth to outline 

circumstances in which. for example, 

adultery may be viewed as morally 

justifiable. At times the extent to 

which Vardy seeks to reject that which 

has gone before is such that one in 

inclined to accuse him of the mutiny 

of lvan Karamazov "lvan doesn't have 

(a) god, he has an idea", but on 

f urther inspection this is proven not 

to be the case. Vardy's religious or 

spiritual vision is rather one in which 

the selfhood and the inherent sexuality 

of each individual are respected, and in 

which love and trust are the essential 

prerequisites for intimate physical 

relationships. This is a "positive" image 

of sexuality, in contrast to that which 

Vardy shows 

to have been preached during a large 

part of the history of (particularly 

Western) Christianity. The book 

embodies a clear vision of 

sexual, and indeed 

social, ethics in 

society, one that is 

perhaps best 

summarised in the 

book's final sentence, 

emphasising "the need 

to be gentle with 

ourselves and with one 

, 

t 

OO 

another as we grapple 

with difficult problems, 

and to see that the 

presence of genuine, deep 

and committed love, 

humility, compassion and 

gentleness provide the 

best signs of God's 

presence....(that may be) 

found in the most 

unexpected places." 

The coverage of the 

book is at times patchy, perhaps 

excusable given the enormity of its 

subject-matter; there is very little on 

the conventions of Courtly Love, and 

nothing on the use of medical 

"knowledge" to.oppress women, eg. 

the issue of hysteria, to give but two 

examples, but this is largely counterbalanced 

by an impressive range of 

reference points and footnotes, the 

occasional and very welcome greeting 

being given to mystics such as William 

Blake and Vladimir Soloviev. The ethos 

conveyed though is small-l liberal, 

small-c christian yet far from being 

secular or materialist. Despite certain 

shortcomings, The Puzzle of Sex 

largely lives up to the claims made for 

it-to provide what after all is an 

introduction to the massive realm of 

sexual ethics, and one that for the 

greater part is written in a sensitive, 

impression-creating fashion. @ 

Dominic Heaney is a student at the 

University of St. Andrews 

movement 24

LITURGY SHOCK 

HORROR: A headline 

from the lr'mes recent 

coverage of General 

Synod screamed from the 

front page in deathless (if 

not breathless) prose: 

"New Lord's Prayer 

Divides the Church". So 

just what is this new 

Lord's Prayer and why 

has it rent the moral 

fabric of the nation in 

two? Are they ProPosing 

a PC "our parental units 

in heaven, we just 

stopped by to say hello"? 

Or offering thanks to 

Sophia from whom our 

life matrix springs? 

Alas, the boffins which 

legislate the C of E's 

worship were instead 

debating whether or not to 

change to a "modern" 

version- "modern" 

meaning what the rest of 

English speaking 

Christendom has used 

since Spandau Ballet had 

a number one 

single 

- which uses 

"save us f rom the time 

of trial" instead of "lead 

us not into temptation". 

I don't know what's 

worse: the perception 

that the C of E is 

populated by ageing 

fossils rejected by the 

local Amateur Dramatics 

Society and forced to 

vent their desire for 

pretty costumes and 

Elizabethan verse into the 

Church; or that it's true. 

THANKS FOR THE HELP: 

Thought For The Day's 

answer to Zoe Ball, Anne 

Atkins prefaced a 

typically moderate article 

in the Sun last summer 

with:"This is not oPinion; 

it is fact" and Proceeded 

to statd that a GaY Man 

has a life exPectancY of 

43 years and theY are 

likely to be 17 times 

more likely to be a 

Paedophile. For this 

breach of accuracy and 

journalistic imPartialitY, 

the Press ComPlaints 

Commission made them 

print the results of their 

adjudication, which the 

Sun dutif ully Published 

somewhere near the 

shipping forecasts. 

It should be 

something of a victorY. 

except the language of a 

Press Complaints 

Commission adjudication 

takes a lot of the joy out 

of it. They tend to read 

something like this: 

"Mr S Newman of 

London SW7 complained 

to the Press Complaints 

Commission that an 

article headlined "The 

Earth ls Flat" failed to 

distinguish between 

comment, conjecture and 

fact in breach of Clause 1 

(Accuracy) of the Code of 

Practice. 

"The complainant 

argued that none of the 

statements were fact. 

They suggested that the 

American research upon 

which they suspected the 

claims had been based on 

was flawed and that 

Euclidian geometry. the 

work of Copernicus and 

the view from the moon 

contradicts this. 

"The newspaper and 

the journalist stood by the 

story and submitted 

references to academic 

research and calculations 

which they said supported 

the claims. However. the 

newspaper offered a clarification 

which accepted that 

the statistics on which the 

journalist had based her 

case had been challenged 

and that 'although broadly 

accurate' her interpretations 

should not be 

regarded as absolute. 

"As in previous cases, 

the Commission was clear 

that claims such as this 

should not be presented 

as fact." 

Still awake? 

THE DOUBLE LIFE OF AN 

EASTENDERS PRIEST 

Never mind Joe Wicks, 

the latest schizoPhrenic 

to hit Albert Square is 

Alex the Vicar. Since his 

introduction a year ago, 

Alex has the most bizarre 

personality switches 

depending on the needs 

of a plot. 

One minute he's 

everybody's right-on 

priest, straightening out 

Sarah Hills, taking on lan 

Beale and getting a 

Hospice built for ex-cons 

built in Walford. The next 

he's all conventional and 

card igan-wearing. 

Especially when it comes 

to sex. 

With his brief relationship 

with Kathy, it looked 

as though he was trying 

out for Richard 

Chamberlain's role in 

The Thorn Birds. One 

night of passion and 

soon there's so much 

angst and misery I 

thought I was watching 

Brookie instead. 

I have no idea what 

the BBC think Clergy do 

on their nights off -read 

Thackeray to invalids, 

perhaps-but it brings up 

an important point. I dare 

anyone to identify one 

person of the cloth on 

telly who does not seem 

like a nineteenth century 

stereotype when it comes 

to sex. Let's face it. 

someone needs to tell the 

television writers of 

Britain that being a goodie 

doesn't preclude doing 

the nasty now and then. 

THE TWIN DILEMMA: 

Everyone must have 

wondered at some time in 

their life if they have a 

doppelgdnger, a twin who 

has taken all the 

divergent paths we never 

took. For example, I feel 

certain that there's a 

reptillian counterpart to 

myself, far better 

adjusted, listening to 

Graham Kendrick and 

dealing in pithy aphorisms 

on Thought For The Day. 

Apparently, our mate 

Jesus has a twin brother, 

with the convenient 

moniker "Christ Didymus 

Thomas". Didymus has 

announced his twin 

divinity via e-mail to all 

and sundry. 

Didy's apologia takes 

up a good 1O pages chock 

full of Biblical proof-texts 

such as "Daniel 

12:5-then I Daniel 

looked, and behold, there 

stood other two, the one 

on this side of the bank of 

the river, and the other on 

that side of the bank of 

the river (TWO CHRIST 

FIGURES) I AM THE TWIN 

BROTHER OF JESUS." 

This somehow escaped 

my notice the first time I 

read it in the Bible, I must 

confess-perhaps I should 

check the original Hebrew. 

It would seem Didy is 

not like his brother, who 

opted for the rather 

impractical stance of 

loving one's neighbour. 

Didymus is something of 

a hardliner; Catholics in 

particular take up much 

of his ire. And while his 

brother had something of 

a knack for the odd 

parable or metaphor, Didy 

tends to be a bit more 

brusque in his use of 

language, utilising 

evocative turns of phrase 

such as "The Pope 

wanders the earth claiming 

to speak for God. Yet he is 

a beast child of Satan" 

He concludes, as so 

many of these people do, 

in upper case: "AS MY 

FATHER PROMISED I AM 

HERE TO ESTABLISH HIS 

KINGDOM, ALL THE 

WORLD WILL KNOW ME 

BY MY WORKS." 

Keep taking the tablets, 

Didymus. 

TIE ME ARCHBISHOP OF 

CANTERBURY DOWN. 

SPORT George Carey has 

become the softest 

target in religion today. 

Long time readers will 

know that I have on 

various occasion accused 

Georgie boy-last heard 

giving a Christmas sermon 

over the Tannoys at ASDA 

last December-of being 

out of touch and 

something of a quack. 

Well, tell me what l'm 

supposed to do when the 

Primate of all England 

says he's a bit like Rolf 

Harris, as he was quoted 

in the newspapers last 

month ? 

I'm still practicising 

self-restraint even now. 

THE SERPENT

"It's impolite to talk 

about religion artd 

politics. )) 

Wedo 

o 

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