April 2008 - Volume 30, Issue No. 4

Dear Friends
If you have been reading recent editions of Compass you will know that closer relationships are being forged between this Benefice and other parishes in the South Notts Cluster. As part of this, the Reverend Steve Osman and I will be taking it in turns to write the letter for our parish magazines. The month Steve writes:

Yet again, the church has hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons. The Archbishop of Canterbury gives a lecture to a bunch of lawyers, mentions Shariah law and British legal system in the same sentence, and for the next few days the media has open season on the church. What worried me was that many, in and out of the media, jumped to conclusions and made harsh judgements without bothering to check the facts.

A similar thing happened to me in my last parish. I wrote an article for the parish magazine about parenting. I mentioned that, in my observation, in the estate where we lived, a lot of parents talked to their kids like I sometimes talked to my dog. The local press got hold of the article and I was headline news for a day. I received 3 or 4 letters of abuse from animal lovers who assumed I was maltreating my dog! What was funny if it wasn’t so sad is that a) they never bothered to check out what I was really saying and b) they were more concerned about animals than the children on our deprived estate.

It is an unwritten rule that you never talk about religion or politics in polite company. I want to challenge that point of view. Our Archbishop will probably be wishing he had kept to that rule – his comments were about both religion and politics – no wonder he stirred such a reaction. But it seems to me that religion and politics are both about real life; both are about ideas; both affect decision making, personally and corporately. They’re simply too important to keep private.

I know why they’re subjects usually avoided – it’s because they stir such deep emotion, they affect the basis of our being. If I hold a deep-seated belief and someone else presents an alternative, I’m going to feel threatened. However, what I would hope I could do was hold a reasonable and reasoned conversation, not scream and shout at them. From the Christian point of view, I believe Christianity holds up to the closest scrutiny and the fiercest criticism, for me it is a reasonable faith. I sometimes think those who scream and shout do so out of insecurity; they’re not sure of their ground so they attack rather than defend.

Over the centuries the church has been guilty of unreasonable attack, using blasphemy laws to stifle opinion. It was Forrest Gump’s mother who said life was like a box of chocolates. So is the church. Some churches are like nougat – hard and unyielding, some are like strawberry creams – soft all through with nothing to get you teeth into. The best church is like the hazelnut caramel – a firm centre, sure of what it believes, but soft on the outside, open and welcoming to all who seek a reasonable faith.
Steve Osman