thinking mission

hopeful imagination

I’m grateful to Andy Goodliff  for bringing together this year’s Advent Blog. Pop over for a look when you can.  It’ll be interesting to see how the different styles are reflected in the different contributions.  Mine is on 10 December, which is fine, except that I dread someone picking my idea just the day before I write!  

For me, Advent is the season in the church calendar that rarely seems to meet its full potential so hopefully, between us, we can open up something of the rich potential of the season. 

David Kerrigan

groucho running the UN?

Creation Care or Global Warming or Climate Change is back on the agenda.  The next Intergovernmental Global Conference on Climate Change takes place in Cancun, Mexico at the end of November.  You can find details here but its clear already that Governments, including our own, are playing down any prospects of an agreement.  This is hardly a surprise but it feels depressing. 

We will be writing letters shortly to do whatever we can to keep up the pressure on this issue.   Last year was such a disappointment and with a weakened US President and an even deeper economic crisis, we look likely to lose another valuable year before some joined up thinking emerges.  

Can I encourage you to do whatever you can to put pressure on your MP by writing, emailing or calling.  These things matter – every voice is one more reason why Governments will listen.  By the way, Write to Them makes writing to your MP so easy.  Another brilliant website is theyworkforyou.com and if you put in your postcode you can find your MP and see how they have voted on climate change issues so far. 

In the meantime, you can at least rest assured that some of the clearest minds in the world are working on the problem.  Or can you?  If you listen carefully you can almost hear Groucho Marx reciting the following text on the UN Climate Change site referenced above:

“United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

The United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Cancun, Mexico, from 29 November to 10 December 2010, encompasses the sixteenth Conference of the Parties (COP) and the sixth Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP), as well as the thirty-third sessions of both the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) and the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), and the fifteenth session of the AWG-KP and thirteenth session of the AWG-LCA.

To discuss future commitments for industrialized countries under the Kyoto Protocol, the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP) established a working group in December 2005 called the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP). In Copenhagen, at its fifth session, the CMP requested the AWG-KP to deliver the results of its work for adoption by CMP 6 in Cancun.

There’s more like this ... but let’s just pray that out of the maze comes some good news – soon!

David Kerrigan

the fruits of bad theology

Our last edition of the BMS engage magazine upset a number who fervently support the nation of Israel.  In pursuing our occasional ‘guest editor’ policy, specifically designed to enable voices from the world church to shape and inform our views, some protested about Rev Dr Alex Awad’s article about Palestine.  Alex is an Arab Christian leader whose family have been Christians in Palestine for centuries.  You can read his article here. Interestingly, as the letters came in, I was in the West Bank visiting Alex and other BMS partners.

Those who wrote to us were mostly part of the Christian Zionist movement in the USA and UK, rather than from our Baptist Churches.  But this is an important issue so let me make a few personal comments on this most important of issues. 

Firstly, concerning theology.  A Christian Zionist worldview sees the establishment of the Nation State of Israel as the fulfilment of biblical prophecy, and with it a particular end-times theology associated with the return of Christ.  I respect those who hold such a view as long as they express it politely, which most did, but I strongly disagree with them.  The Bible does speak of a special place for the Jews, but Christian Zionism makes the mistake of equating this with the establishment of the State of Israel. 

Secondly, concerning politics.  Jews have been victims of persecution for centuries and so it was understandable that at the end of the 19th century a vision arose for a Jewish state.  However, the old slogan concerning Palestine – “a land without a people for a people without a land” – was a fallacy.  At its crudest, this indicated an attempt to ignore the presence of the Arab Palestinian people, Christians and Muslims.  At its most generous interpretation it is argued that “a land without a people” meant “a people in the sense of a self-conscious national group.”  But the effect has been the same. The land that had been home to Arab Christians and Muslims for a thousand years and more is today a land where they live as second or third class citizens. 

However, and this is messy but pragmatic, the status quo is irreversible.  I support the right of the Jewish people to live in peace and security in today’s Israel, and abhor the daily threat under which they live from some surrounding states.  I just ask that they grant the same dignity for the Palestinian Christians and Muslims. 

Thirdly, bring theology and politics together.  The gospel is always a justice issue and justice is always a political issue.  Theology, be it good or bad, will express itself politically, for good or ill.  The plight of the Jews over many centuries, the disgrace of anti-Semitism, the horror of the holocaust – the roots of these vilest of sins are to be traced back in large measure to bad theology.  The same is true of the many expressions of modern day terrorism.  But whether it is State oppression or violent protest, they are both parasitical, they feed on each other.  What is needed is not ideologues but peacemakers.

The tragedy is that the state of Israel does not offer to the Palestinian people the very thing it long desired for itself.  Even now, with the West Bank and Gaza effectively the maximum limits of any future state for the Palestinian people, Israel denies them even this by building settlements that defy the will of the international community and make life for the Palestinians insufferable behind a wall that is as offensive as it is ultimately futile.  Jews, condemned to live in Ghettos for centuries now have a state of their own and imprison the Palestinians in a Ghetto instead.  How ironic.

David Kerrigan