First Thursday- summary of the discussion
Gaza and Ukraine are still top of the international news. They reminded us of the title of Bishop James Jones’ report on the Hillsborough disaster: “The Patronising Disposition of Unaccountable Power”. Here in the UK the electoral cycle is beginning to dominate everything, with politicians seemingly afraid to speak the truth for fear of media attacks and vote loss.
But good creative politics involves breaking through the polarised “tribal” set positions. One Quaker group dealing with this is the “Truth and Integrity Group”- https://quakertruth.org/ Another example was the joint statement on antisemitism from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra and Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg: Israel-Gaza Conflict – UK faith leaders condemn antisemitism and call for solidarity between faith communities | The Archbishop of Canterbury. Colossians 3, verse 9 says “Do not lie to one another”- which presumably rules out the half-truths which enable “group-think”.
Building consensus and agreement on other issues (for example Gaza itself) can be far more problematic, and the tendency to form antagonistic groups easily dominates (today reinforced by social media algorithms, “feeding” more of what you’ve already selected). Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Moral Man and Immoral Society” pointed out this danger many years ago, and more recently Walter Wink’s work on “Principalities and Powers” explores how institutions can become sub-human (“demonic”??). See also Richard Foster’s “Money, Sex and Power”. Matt Wilde’s “A Blessing and the Curse” describes how commodities can distort a community’s life (in that case oil in Venezuela).
Richard Roberts, in “Personhood and Performance” points to the increasing role of “management” in our institutions, and says “Increasingly, it is those at the extremes of elite wealth and marginal poverty who may fall outside its remit and become free to think beyond its parameters.” The “Fairness Foundation”: https://fairnessfoundation.com/ is one important organisation tackling issues of inequality in our society.
Jesus told a Parable of a Sower (Mark 4, verses 1 to 9) where a great deal of the work led to no result and only some produced a harvest. Roy Jenkins (Baptist minister) said on a Thought for the Day that what we need to do is to “take the near edge of something that really bugs you” and work on that (and perhaps Gaza should fall into that category as the seemingly endless slaughter goes on).
Websites and Links:
Amnesty International https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrYsneasXCY
Avaaz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMFSgNJ0dWA