Sex Education from the BBC: what's missing?

More than a third of women and a quarter of men in their teens and early 20s admitted it had not been "the right time" when they first had sex.  Thus the BBC reports on the 'National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles'. They then give a helpful list for anyone wondering...

When is the right time?

• If you think you might have sex, ask yourself:
• Does it feel right?
• Do I love my partner?
• Does he/she love me just as much?
• Have we talked about using condoms to prevent STIs and HIV, and was the talk OK?
• Have we got contraception organised to protect against pregnancy?
• Do I feel able to say "no" at any point if I change my mind, and will we both be OK with that

Yup, 'Am I married to my partner'? doesn't come into it. The first 3 conditions are subjective - the survey assumes that children as young as 13 are able to answer these questions well and be 'sexually competent' Have they ever met a 13 year old? All the criteria would be also satisfied by someone cheating on their partner.  The only moral question here is consent - tick that box and everything else is ok. Is sex really that trivial? 

I note in passing that the report never refers to 'children' - "22.4% and 36.2% of men and women who had first sex at age 13–14 years were categorised as ‘sexually competent". Child sexual behaviour is reported as if it were adult sexual behaviour. Am I alone in finding that a bit disturbing?

The genuinely radical option here is to honour sex as the ultimate physical expression of commitment, saved for the one person to whom you make the lifelong covenant pledge of marriage. Even if you don't buy the 'sex as an expression of commitment' thing and just want to be pragmatic about it, if you value the relationship you're in, you'll wait, as it's better for the relationship.  

There are public health benefits too: sexually transmitted diseases are transmitted by, you guessed it... They jumped massively in 2012-15, and the number of people attending sexual health clinics in Wales has doubled in just 5 years. There would be dramatic falls in STIs if it was normal to pursue faithfulness to a single partner and public health policy encouraged people to wait. Sure, not everyone will do it: not everyone takes up the MMR vaccine either but that doesn't make it bad practice. And it could save the NHS up to £1bn a year, which is before we get into all the other financial costs of a culture of casual sex.  A culture which the BBC itself has been normalising for decades. 

One of the complaints in the Br***t debate is that you can't question immigration without being labelled as racist. Can we discuss sexual behaviour without being labelled as moralising? 

I've got that Joy, Joy, Joy: Where? Feelings, Catharsis and a Monk

'Inside Out' takes us inside the head of an 11 year old girl, and the 5 emotions which direct her responses to the world. 'Joy' is in charge inside the girls head, but anger, fear, disgust and sadness all chip in.

One of the best things about the film is that 'Sadness' goes from being a marginal, misunderstood feeling to one that's indispensable, and there's a sense that maturity involves a more complicated mix of feelings than just being joyful all the time.

However there's also a missing ingredient: alongside the 5 emotions there's no role for reason, conscience, soul, or will. Character emerges from the interaction of the emotions. The emotions moderate each other, but the 'train of thought' only visits occasionally to take things into long-term memory, and 'abstract thought' is a hazardous and destructive zone hidden at the back of the mind.

On Sunday we used a clip from the movie in our cafe service, the following day I stumbled across this:

"there are seven principal affections that rise by turns form the one affective disposition of the soul: hope and fear, joy and grief, hatred, love and shame. All these can be ordered at one time, and disordered at another."

'Ordered' means directed towards the right thing - hating justice would be disordered, as would fear of something harmless. The writer? Richard of St. Victor a 12th century monk and theologian. Fear, joy, hatred (anger), shame (disgust) and grief (sadness). Together in Inside Out, the 5 characters all 'love our girl', so hope is the only one missing.

Richard writes of virtue being a state where our emotions are rightly ordered, and rightly moderated. I.e. directed towards the right thing, with the right intensity.

"one ought to keep cautious watch over all the virtues so that they are not only ordered but also moderated. For excessive fear often falls into despair; excessive grief into bitterness; immoderate hope into presumption; overabundant love into flattery; unnecessary joy into dissolution; intemperate anger into fury. And so in this way virtues are turned into vices if they are not moderated by discretion"

This makes a lot of sense, but can sound a bit uptight. I'm put in mind of the imam in Rev who occasionally declares 'too much humour'. Don't we need to let it all out at times? Digital Nun has this to say on the death of David Bowie:

A public figure many feel they knew personally, and who had attained some sort of iconic status, is publicly mourned in a way that may truly be called cathartic.

It is some time since I last read Aristotle’s Poetics, but I remember thinking how interesting it was that his notion of the purging of the emotions of pity and fear should be linked to the Greek word for purity, katharos. We are cleansed by the safe release of potentially destructive emotions. Isn’t that what we are seeing in the reaction to David Bowie’s death? Our own death and the feelings we have about it are somehow tied up with his. Add to that the power of the media to make us feel we have a personal connection with someone; its ability to scatter stardust over even the most ordinary activity or event; above all, the way in which it invites a sense of immediate engagement, all these contribute to the extraordinary scenes we have witnessed.

The counterpoint to this catharsis is that Bowie kept his illness a secret, something private, in one one commentator calls a revolutionary  avoidance of the private sphere in an age where more and more is done in public. Bowie himself predicted of the internet in 2000   "I think the potential of what the Internet is going to do to society both good and bad is unimaginable. I think we're on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying." In the few years I've been blogging, blogging itself has taken a back seat to the more immediate social media - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. We've moved from sharing our thoughts to sharing our lives. The more immediate the media, the more immediate the catharsis. 

What would Richard of St. Victor make of all this? What is the place of catharsis, and moderation? If we are a generation that 'hears with our eyes and thinks with our feelings', how do we make sure we become more emotionally intelligent, not just more emotional? Or am I overthinking this?

Rebranding Sin

"Ashley Madison is the number one service for people seeking discreet relationships."

translation: "Ashley Madison is the number one service for people seeking to cheat on their spouse/partner and get away with it". Adultery rebranded as discretion. 

"Some journalists have turned the focus of the criminal act against Ashley Madison inside out, attacking us instead of the hackers," the company said on Monday. (source)

that's right, because what you do stinks. It isn't illegal but it's destructive and evil. Every secret will eventually be revealed, so the hackers have just given 33m people a sneak preview of one small aspect of the day of judgement. People will sin if they can persuade themselves that a) they aren't really doing something that bad and b) they can get away with it. Ashley Madison is complicit in both. 

In other news, Mammon continues its baleful patronage of global football. Spending £1bn on footballers in a calendar year isn't obscene conspicuous consumption on bread and circuses, it's 'investing in playing talent'. Of course.How many desperate refugees in mainland Europe you could effectively transfer to a fruitful new life with £36m, instead of moving 1 football player?

Christianity: Public Benefit, Personal Benefit

The contrast between the Christianity I see our culture belittle nightly, and the Christianity I see our country benefit from daily, could not be greater.

The reality of Christian mission in today’s churches is a story of thousands of quiet kindnesses. In many of our most disadvantaged communities it is the churches that provide warmth, food, friendship and support for individuals who have fallen on the worst of times. The homeless, those in the grip of alcoholism or drug addiction, individuals with undiagnosed mental health problems and those overwhelmed by multiple crises are all helped — in innumerable ways — by Christians....

...genuine Christian faith — far from making any individual more invincibly convinced of their own righteousness — makes us realise just how flawed and fallible we all are. I am selfish, lazy, greedy, hypocritical, confused, self-deceiving, impatient and weak. And that’s just on a good day. As the Book of Common Prayer puts it, ‘We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts…And there is no health in us.’

Christianity helps us recognise and confront those weaknesses with a resolution — albeit imperfect and fragile — to do better. But more importantly, it encourages us to feel a sense of empathy rather than superiority towards others because we recognise that we are as guilty of selfishness and open to temptation as anyone.

More than that, Christianity encourages us to see that, while all of us are prey to weakness, there is a potential for good in everyone. Every individual is precious

guess the author? It's worth reading the whole article. He probably has a slightly better grasp of the heart of Christian faith than his boss. 

British Values

40% of schoolgirls report being coerced into sexual activity by their boyfriends, and we release a film on Valentines Day telling us that submitting to male coercion and power is sexy.

On the 5th anniversary of the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, a £5.14bn deal is agreed to show premier league football on TV. That's enough to kit out every one of the nearly 4m refugees with tents, blankets, kitchen equipment, and have some spare for food. Our government is doing its bit, usually greeted with howls of protest for spending 'our' money on foreign aid.

We all champion free speech on Twitter, but at the beating heart of Britians secular deity there's not a lot of it about.

People like me complain about things on social media but do nothing practical to fix them. Blogging is the easy short-cut to feeling righteous....

Do You Trust This Blogger?

Are we becoming more trusting? Some new research published at the Institute for Government (I can feel your pulse racing from here) on who we trust and how much. I was struck by the chart below, on how trust has changed over time (the catchily named Veracity Index, big version here so you can read the labels). Doctors and teachers remain at the top, politicians and journalists at the bottom, with clergy like me fighting it out with newsreaders and police. I was surprised we came out that high. Wonder where celebrity panel-show hosts would rank?



This next one's a bit clearer, a snapshot of who we trust at the moment. For the 25% of you who don't trust me to tell the truth, here's the original. Ha!

It would again be interesting to compare the general with the particular. Do you trust your doctor? Your childs' teacher? Your local vicar/pastor/priest? Your MP? Fiona Bruce? The estate agent who sold you your house/arranged your rental?

And whilst we're at it, do you trust your neighbours? Do you trust the internet provider which has logged the fact you're reading this? Do you trust the internet?



Do you trust yourself? Should the rest of us?

Anthropocene or Neanderthal? Murdoch signals the end of an era

A few days ago, some geologists announced that we were living in a new global epoch, the Anthropocene Age. It turns out that the first nuclear tests marked the beginning of this new phase of global history, up there with the Triassic, the Cretaceous and the Audacious.

It turns out they had got slightly ahead of themselves. We are actually in the final few days of the Neanderthal Period, with the news that the Sun is about to stop publishing pictures of breasts on page 3.

However, there are signs that we may be simply entering the Dacre Age: most of the papers reporting on the Sun story are themselves putting up lots of pictures of women in bikinis, because their readers clearly need to be reminded what a woman in a bikini looks like.

 #Fail.

This has been standard Daily Mail practice for years - x is so outrageous we have to show you a picture of it, just so you know how outrageous it is (wink wink).

Congratulations to the No More Page 3 campaign, even the Mighty Murdoch can be forced to change by people power. Now for Stop the Sidebar?


update: having said all that, the Neanderthals may not have quite given up yet...

UK Generosity Hotspots. Don't come South looking for charity.....

Sheffield is the most generous city in the UK. The city that gave the world cutlery, the Human League, Michael Vaughan, Jessica Ennis, and, um Nick Clegg MP. That's according to some research by a biscuit company, so it must be true.  It looks from the map as though people get stingier the further South and West they are. I was raised in Sheffield but now live in Yeovil; do the maths, but you're wasting your time asking me for a cuppa. I'm joking of course.

But its nice to see that a bit of basic civility and kindness is alive and well, in the North anyway.

‘In many situations, people get more of a buzz out of extending the hand of generosity to others than they do when being a recipient of the gesture themselves.’ said the neuropsychologist who did the research. 'It is more blessed to give than to receive', said Jesus a few years earlier. 

Ht Metro

What annoys us doesn't annoy Jesus, and what annoys Jesus doesn't annoy us.

From a recent survey:

Modern life is a daily struggle. Here, according to a poll of 2,000 Britons for Nurofen Express, are the top 50 most annoying things about it.

1. Your laptop/computer freezing
2. PPI calls
3. Slow Wi-Fi
4. Being stuck in traffic
5. People who take up two parking spaces
6. Public transport delays
7. Junk mail
8. Waiting on the phone for the doctors

I think we'll stop there because I've already cried myself completely out. Waiting on the phone for the doctor? Well, it's a close call compared to dying of Ebola because there isn't a doctor for miles, and no decent road to carry any traffic to the nearest hospital (read adapted shed). It's simply tragic.

Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its mould, says Romans 12. If these are the things which really wind us up (I'm talking to Christians here, sorry if you're not one, please bear with me) then we have genuinely lost the plot. Clue: what is Jesus most annoyed about? Probably nothing that's in our top 50.

What annoys us doesn't annoy Jesus, and what annoys Jesus doesn't annoy us. And it should.

Diabetic dilemma?

I'm opposed to use of embryonic tissue/unborn babies (pick the description which expresses your ethical position) in scientific research. To put it simply I believe that every life is precious and that people are not means to an end.

However I also have a child with type 1 diabetes and was really pleased to hear the recent announcement of a major step forward in diabetes treatment. In diabetes, the immune system attacks the cells in the body which produce insulin, which in turn regulates blood sugar. Being able to create, and implant, replacement cells is the only possibility of a cure, short of a transplanted pancreas. Scientists have managed to create new cells which a) work in mice and b) in large enough quantities to promise a general cure, rather than a few lucky individuals.

There's still a long way to go, but it gives me hope that my child won't have to inject themselves 4 times a day and take their blood sugar on a regular basis.

But, part of the story of the research is the use of embryonic stem cells, i.e. cells harvested from partially-developed unborn humans.

So I have mixed feelings. And mixed thoughts. If I boycotted everything that had an ethically dodgy history to it, I'd have to leave the UK for a start, it being a country enriched through slavery, exploitation of the poor and of other countries. But I do boycott some things, and actively try to make decisions based on my faith and ethics, rather than on what's cheaper/most convenient/etc. How far does that go? I wouldn't dream of denying my child a treatment that could dramatically change her life. It would be easier if it was me that was the diabetic, then I'm the only victim/beneficiary of whatever moral sum has to be calculated.

And if use of embryonic tissue isn't a bridge too far, then what is? If a medical/scientific discovery is made, do we do the best we can with it, no matter how the breakthrough came (e.g. through creating & dropping a nuclear bomb, during an arms race, vivisection, sending a rocket into space rather than helping millions in poverty)? A discovery can't be un-discovered.

As you can tell, I'm a little confused.....

On not assisting 'assisted dying'.

I'm also uneasy about the effect the Bill will have on the relationship between doctors and patients. Frankly, I want my doctors to be the sort of people who recoil from ending someone's life. Unless they are, it's a degree or two more difficult to trust my loved ones or myself into their care. If I or my loved ones were disabled or had limited mental capacity, I would be even more wary. 

excellent piece by Jan Henderson, read the rest here. 

I'm in agreement with Jan, and she states many of the reasons better than I could. The Belgian journey has already taken them to legalising this for children, and the UK experience with abortion - legalised for exceptional circumstances, but now used routinely as a method of birth control - shows that reality can end up a long way from where those drafting the laws intended it. 

So I'm with Justin Welby, rather than George Carey on this one. Freedom of choice tends to serve the strong, rather than the weak and vulnerable, because the weak have fewer choices, and less power to use them. The law is there to protect the vulnerable. It's interesting how the terminology has changed to emphasise choice: dying (something done by the patient) rather than euthanasia (something done by the doctor). 

Having talked people through a desire for suicide who ended up living happily, I have an intrinsic caution over the nature of a 'choice' to die. It's not made in a set of clean, clear-minded circumstances, and changing the culture around death with complicate things even further.

Update: good response to George Carey here from Ian Paul.

And the BMA is still opposed to assisted dying, despite an editorial in its house journal in favour.

I was struck by a comment I saw on Nick Baines blog 'we already have assisted dying, it's called a hospice'

Good Values, Bad Values, No Values?

This is really worth a read

If, for example, your country has a public health system that ensures that everyone who needs treatment receives it, without payment, it helps instil the belief that it is normal to care for strangers, and abnormal and wrong to neglect them. If you live in a country where people are left to die, this embeds the idea that you have no responsibility towards the poor and weak. The existence of these traits is supported by a vast body of experimental and observational research, of which Labour and the US Democrats appear determined to know nothing.

We are not born with our core values: they are strongly shaped by our social environment. These values can be placed on a spectrum between extrinsic and intrinsic. People towards the intrinsic end have high levels of self-acceptance, strong bonds of intimacy and a powerful desire to help others. People at the other end are drawn to external signifiers, such as fame, financial success and attractiveness. They seek praise and rewards from others.

Research across 70 countries suggests that intrinsic values are strongly associated with an understanding of others, tolerance, appreciation, cooperation and empathy. Those with strong extrinsic values tend to have lower empathy, a stronger attraction towards power, hierarchy and inequality, greater prejudice towards outsiders, and less concern for global justice and the natural world. These clusters exist in opposition to each other: as one set of values strengthens, the other weakens.

They tend to report higher levels of stress, anxiety, anger, envy, dissatisfaction and depression than those at the intrinsic end. Societies in which extrinsic goals are widely adopted are more unequal and uncooperative than those with deep intrinsic values. In one experiment, people with strong extrinsic values who were given a resource to share soon exhausted it (unlike a group with strong intrinsic values), as they all sought to take more than their due.

As extrinsic values are strongly associated with conservative politics, it's in the interests of conservative parties and conservative media to cultivate these values. There are three basic methods. The first is to generate a sense of threat. Experiments reported in the journal Motivation and Emotion suggest that when people feel threatened or insecure, they gravitate towards extrinsic goals. Perceived dangers – such as the threat of crime, terrorism, deficits, inflation or immigration – trigger a short-term survival response, in which you protect your own interests and forget other people's.

do read the whole thing, a really key contribution to the values debate. He makes the excellent point that if taxation if repeatedly portrayed as a burden, people will come to resent it and see it as a bad thing - taxation is one way in which we act as our brother and sisters keeper, one way in which we are bound together as a community and nation.

update: for a different but helpful perspective, try British Values do not Exist, which argues that we should be talking about British institutions (sovereign parliament, rule of law, monarchy etc.). Actually, not that different - the piece above is to some degree about how our institutions work (public health, the rule of law etc.) and how they shape, and are shaped by society. Values don't exist in a vacuum.

(and also see yesterdays post on what sort of values bring the best out of us)

The Pressure to Die

"Many people ask me, several times a week... if I ever contemplate (assisted suicide). It makes one feel like I should be contemplating it for the sake of the health service, for my family watching what I'm going through. I'm afraid that it will extend into the social conscience that people will almost expect assisted dying.... a (new) law will pressurise people."

story here.

If this is happening when assisted suicide is still illegal (though increasingly allowed through the legal system), then it will only get worse if it is legalised.

Even those who support euthanasia agree that it is a 'slippery slope', 12 years after legalising it, Belgium has now extended euthanasia to children. The Belgian experience has seen assisted dying extended to people who aren't terminally ill, and with the change in law has come a change in culture. Once you cross a line, it becomes very difficult to draw new ones that have the same moral force.

The Moral Culture of Banking: Selling Ethics by the Pound

A young man I know was interviewed for a City job earlier this year. He was turned down for it not because he wasn't able, but because he 'wasn't sufficiently motivated by money.'

We've got used to thinking of everything in terms of economics: earlier this week Ed Balls spoke of preschools and nurseries as part of our 'economic infrastructure', and betting companies like BrokeLads are classed as 'financial services'. But isn't there something wrong with an economic sector, no matter how much it contributes to the economy, fuelled principally by greed?

The latest warnings of bankers fleeing overseas as a result of a bonus cap are pathetic. Who would you rather have working for you: someone who'll work hard and do their best because of pride in the job and personal integrity, or someone who'll only do it if you throw enough cash and share options at them? Do we want people who need an 'incentive to behave prudently and responsibly' running our biggest companies? Since when did ethics become an optional extra, sold by the pound?

It shouldn't therefore be a surprise to find the same people dodging taxes. After all, greed means there's no such thing as 'enough', and whether its the badly paid cleaner in your office or the taxpayer who pays the price, who cares? Why should financiers change their behaviour when it comes to HMRC? Bonus culture and tax avoidance are two sides of the same coin.

George Osborne talks of rebalancing the economy. That's not the only thing that needs rebalancing. If we continue to celebrate being a 'leading financial services sector', driven by companies who hold greed and avarice as key values and motivational factors, then we will not only breed a class of rich but very selfish people, but we'll attract more than our fair share of similar people from other countries. Shouldn't we have an economy where the brightest minds are attracted, not to the jobs which reward greed, but jobs which do most good and are most worthwhile? There are higher values than economics, but we're struggling to give them a look in. There's a reason why Dragons Den, which celebrates inventiveness and enterprise, is on BBC2, whilst the Apprentice, which rewards ruthlessness, cheating and moral short-cutting, is a flagship BBC1 programme.

If our education system and our society is merely producing brilliant minds who have no moral issue with working this way, then we have a problem. History is littered with the victims of people who were brilliant scientists, engineers, educationalists, politicians, even religious leaders, who had lost their souls along the way.

Even if the bonus cap is flawed in other ways, if it means less of a culture of greed in the UK, then the Treasury should be looking for a way to work with it, not oppose it. No, wait, Treasury, the clue's in the name isn't it?

Pornography: straws in the wind?

Following last weeks government announcement about a default block on online pornography, quickly followed by Microsoft suddenly discovering that they could make more difficult for certain sorts of web users, comes a third straw in the wind.

Co-op supermarkets have given lads mags a deadline of 9th September to introduce 'modesty bags' or be withdrawn from sale. Apparently the Daily Sport has already agreed to this - at our local Co-op, it's displayed at the eye level of an average 10 year old.

Steve Murrells, retail chief executive for the Co-operative Group, said: "As a community-based retailer, we have listened to the concerns of our customers and members, many of whom say they object to their children being able to see overt sexual images in our stores.

"Whilst we have tried to mitigate the likelihood of young children seeing the images with a number of measures in store, the most effective way of doing this is for these magazines to be put in individual, sealed modesty bags."

Well, no, the most effective way is not to stock them at all, the way you currently don't stock other pornographic titles. The local Tesco Express, which has all the papers at floor level, doesn't sell the Sport, though the lads mags are within easy reach/sight of the Year 6 kids from the local primary school. 

With 'No More Page 3' gaining signatories and influence, there are a few signs of hope that the tide of pornification is turning. But there's a long way to go, and vast swathes of the entertainment and fashion industries still defiantly waving Beyonce's booty at any notions of modesty, sexual purity, and respect for women as people rather than sexual objects.

Absent Fathers Day

'The family' is in rapid flux - the traditional father/sole earner combination of the early to mid 1900s is dying out, and the traditional dual parent family is rapidly following.

Fractured Families, a report issued earlier this week by the Centre for Social Justice, observes:

One in two children born today will not grow up with both their parents and every year an additional 20,000 people, mainly women, join the throngs of those raising children more or less singlehandedly. One million children have no meaningful contact at all with their fathers, and that’s a conservative estimate.

The personal and social costs are huge:

Such breakdown would matter not a lot if the human and economic costs were insignificant. But they are in fact devastating. Children with separated, single or step-parents are 50 per cent more likely to fail at school, have low self-esteem, struggle to make friends and with their behaviour. They often battle with anxiety or depression throughout the rest of their lives. 

Adults’ mental and physical health can take a huge knock when relationships crumble, making it much harder for them to achieve at work and be the parents they want to be. The costs are eye-watering – rising to £49 billion per annum by the end of this Parliament, it’s more than the Government’s whole defence budget.

There is an epidemic of family breakdown, and whilst the government showers sticking plasters at the symptoms (mental health problems, educational failure, substance abuse etc.) nothing is done about the illness. Government after government has shied away from significant investment in family stability, investing in relationships & marriage and encouraging people to stay together.

92% of lone parent families are headed by the mother. Even at birth, 20% of children live with only 1 parent, by the time they are teenagers this is nearly 50%. For up to 3 million children tomorrow will be Absent Fathers Day, and here are some of the the consequences:

Children who experience family breakdown are more likely to 

• experience behavioural problems; 
• perform less well in school; 
• need more medical treatment;
• leave school and home earlier; 
• become sexually active, pregnant or a parent at an early age; 
• and report more depressive symptoms and higher levels of smoking, drinking and other drug use during adolescence and adulthood.

The report points out the structural issues, as well as the personal ones. At the more dramatic end of the scale Fathers4Justice highlight the way that family support often leaves dads out of the picture. Our experience of ante-natal classes was a lot of stuff about the mechanics of birth and feeding the baby, and nothing at all about how to parent together and support each other as mother and father, even though it was a prime opportunity to support new parents in that way. In other cases the father simply walks away. The overall effect is that over 1 million children in the UK never see their father, and up to a million more have little or no meaningful contact.

The UK is near the bottom of international leagues on this. It's peculiar that in some areas of childrens policy, league tables are assiduously compiled and published (education) but in others they are completely ignored.

The full report goes into a lot of detail, statistics, and analysis;

 -  for example that cohabiting couples are 2 to 2.5 times more likely than married couples to break up, which in turn has consequences for the nearly 2m (and rising) number of children in 2-parent cohabiting households.  

 - Or that for every £6,000 in reactive spending to family breakdown, the government spends only £1 on prevention. 

 - Or that 76% of young people in custody have an absent father. 

It's not a simple issue, there are multiple causes, from culture to cost (the sheer cost of getting married makes it unavailable to low-income families). Whatever you think about same-sex marriage, in the light of the above, is that really the top priority in family policy? Shouldn't we be debating all this instead? 

So pray for us dads, absent and present, on Fathers day, for mums, for children. And pray that this will be the generation where the tide of family breakdown turns back, and we get the political and civil and cultural leadership to make that happen. 

Persecution Would Be Easier

60 years from the coronation and anointing of the Queen, head of the Church of England, in a national church, our Christian head of state no longer 'rules' over a Christian country. The long withdrawing roar of the sea of faith - or is it the voice of George Carey? - finds itself fighting, and losing, a series of battles over lost moral beachheads.

Persecution would be easier. In those countries where the state has set itself against the church and the gospel, it's easier to know who your enemies are, and in some ways it's an easier task to identify a Christian worldview within that setting, because it's so clearly not the worldview of the state and prevailing culture. In post-Christian Britain, with bishops in Parliament and vicars acting as state registrars in weddings, things aren't so cut and dried. As society drifts into uncharted waters, it's harder to discern what cultural changes are a drift away from Christian moorings, and what changes merely expose of idolatry, the conflation of class or cultural norms with Christian faith. Sea of Faith is a case in point, a 'Christian' movement that married the modernist spirit of the 20th century just as everyone else left it behind for something less reductionist. 

Gillan Scott puts it well:
whether we are willing to admit it or not we are in the last throes of Christendom in our country.  The religious foundations of our society are in places being replaced by a notional belief in equality for all where religion is put on an equal footing with a whole range of other elements of our society’s make-up.  Christian belief no longer defines the law, but instead is increasingly subject to it.  The problem inevitably now comes in how ‘equality’ is interpreted and who makes the final decision on it.

The hardest work is ahead of us. Moral positions we used to take for granted have to be argued for, and there are some that will simply not make sense to folk outside the church. Jesus says of the Holy Spirit 'the world can neither see him nor know him' (John 14) - some of God's wisdom is simply not available on human channels. So, for example, if marriage is a divine 'given', a calling and structure built into creation by God, which (despite its evolutions) remains at heart the lifelong commitment of a man and a woman and the best context for raising children, there will be a point at which non-Christians simply don't get what we're saying. If marriage it's God's design for sexuality and family life, the fact that it is God's design will cut no ice with people who don't believe in God. It will not make sense.

There are two sorts of intellectual laziness which we're in danger of. The first is the uncritical absorption of cultural values into the Christian faith, which comes from a failure to think through our faith properly and be clear about our theology and foundations. The second is the uncritical rejection of cultural values, excused by biblical proof texts about 'the world', and failure to think clearly, critically and well about life in all its dimensions. The world desperately needs a robust Christian critique and worldview of wealth, economics, war, politics, leadership, poverty, disability, human rights, luxury, justice, power, sexuality and creation. The danger is that people only hear us talking about sex. Here's an exercise: visit Thinking Anglicans. Despite a wide range of topics covered by  Simon and the blogging, team, commenters only seem to want to discuss one thing. Discuss.

British culture is ever more rapidly peeling away from Christian foundations, values and institutions, often leaving the institutions (the most visible signs) long after their foundations have been eroded. As a child I used to dig trenches and holes all the way down the beach as the tide withdrew, to try to keep the water as far up the beach as I could, even though the water source had receded. I think we're right to still do a bit of that, even as the tide goes out. It simply makes sense: if God has made us, loves us, and knows what's best for us, then it's best for us whether we believe in him or not. 

If we can do that without sounding like whining reactionaries, then that would be great, but I'm sure the media and blogosphere can make even the most moderate voice sound like a phobic bigot by taking things out of context. Maybe we will get both the tone and content of our apologetics right, and still it won't get a fair hearing. That's the reality of living in a fallen world.

The Legacy of Thatchers Children

The BBC is currently agonising over whether to play Judy Garlands 'Ding Dong the Witch is Dead', after a Facebook campaign to propel it into the charts in the wake of Margaret Thatchers death. It's hard to know where to start with this one, but if this is society, then maybe Mrs T was right and we'd be better off without it.

The Bishop of Oxford nailed it yesterday: It's almost impossible to find moderate opinions, for or against, on her style of leadership. 

Along with appropriate respect for Mrs Thatcher and her family, there's inevitably going to be some attempt to evaluate her legacy. All the usual headlines and newsreel are being replayed over and over: poll tax, Falklands, 'the ladys not for turning' etc. There's an opportunity for something a bit deeper than this, an analysis of what kind of people we've become, and how Thatchers legacy has affected us. There's a supreme irony in the Brixton 'party' ending in the vandalising of a charity shop. Remind me, wasn't our problem with Thatcher that she encouraged selfishness and individualism and didn't care about communities?

Apart from the gross tastlesness of the Garland campaign, there's a massive trick missed here. Why not Billy Bragg, or some of the more thoughtful protest music from the 1980s? Irony has clearly had it's day other wise the Pet Shop Boys 'Opportunities' would be heading back to its rightful place. Having a party or buying an ITunes track on a deregulated internet - Thatcher would be proud of you all, children of hedonism and the free market.

Her passing actually marks the death of an era when politicians believed in something, and had a clear philosophy. Her successors have been pragmatists, with Blair the crown prince. Our politics is now back in the 1970s - a coalition government, and no party offering any kind of radical and principled alternative. Ed Balls saying 'it's not fair' over and over again does not constitute an alternative, and the knee-jerk response to UKIP's showing in Eastleigh shows how inconsistent and reactive our political leaders are. With a stagnant economy, social decay, a looming energy crisis, and reruns of the Sweeney on Freeview, are we mad, in a coma, or back in time? Do we still have the ability to think our way out of this, to set out a clear vision of what we are and what we want to be, to articulate any kind of political philosophy that doesn't have a price tag? Or is our legacy a self-indulgent bit of social disorder and a silly record?

So here's my candidate for a tribute song:

Travelling overseas I was accosted by a studentWho asked me where I came from, she was prettyChildren don't put smack in your veinsLennon cut his teeth hereAnd the party-pooping left wingWouldn't play the Tories game
We're always in the market for an off-beat love affairWith a foreign delegation condescending for a shareOf a pressure cooker spouting steamThat threatens to unloadWith a power so formidableThe Russian bear is in the woods somewhere

Television comedians united in approvalThe drama that confronts you with real people in real timesI'm only in a band because I failed my own auditionYou have to see somebody suffer other than yourself
Right now we're in a jamWe'll call you back when we get straight'Cos Townsend's coming 'roundHe understands, he won't be lateThere's lots of food for thoughtBut not a great deal on our plateThe southerners don't like usWho can blame 'em seems we're always in the spotlight

We're always in the market for an off-beat love affairHeseltine came up now trees are sprouting everywhereMcDonalds finally found us and we're folklore in TurinWe used to pull the ships inNow we're goin' downLook at the state we're in

it has the added advantage of being musically excellent, rather than the kind of thing that makes you want to eat kitchen tiles. Sorry Judy, but there it is. 

The National Lottery: pet parasite of the nation.

It's amazing how quickly we come to regard institutionalised sin as part of the national furniture:

There are those who claim that to argue against a pastime which gives moments of pleasure in ordinary lives is elitist and snobbish. The truth is the very opposite. It is the Lottery which is the ultimate in social divisiveness. The poor make regular contributions to the rich; in return, one out of many millions will be rewarded and held up as an example of the good fortune which could befall any of them. Could there be a more cynical form of elitism?

If Conservatives truly believed in the importance of work and the market, they would oppose the National Lottery. If those on the left disapproved of exploitation of the vulnerable, their position would be the same. Yet in politics and in the media, it is given a free ride.

Camelot has announced that the Lottery is being revamped. Its central message will, of course, remain unchanged. Your life can be transformed by greed and gambling.

more here. 

As reported last week, Camelot are doubling the price that Lotterites will have to pay for their weekly fix, offset by rises in payouts to the miniscule number who actually win. Did you notice the big national debate that kicked off? Me neither, with the above article being one of the exceptions.

Gambling is a cancer on the poor, sucking most money out of the most deprived communities. A local set of shops in one of the less prosperous parts of  Yeovil has seen several businesses and retailers fail, yet the bookies carries on. The gambling industry has been strangely immune to the recession, with year on year increases almost across the board even since the banking crash. . 

Meanwhile some of the MPs who are supposed to scrutinise this are in the pay of the gambling industry. One  bad but possibly credible argument for raising MPs salaries is that it will make them harder for vested interests to buy, but with several billion to play with I can see the gaming industry comfortably outbidding whatever salary we give our legislators. Government statistics show that problem gambling has increased, despite the recession, yet what's happening to address this? At least the Camelot price hike might put a few more people off the gateway drug of the Lottery, though I doubt this has come high in their considerations. 

The gambling industry is a parasite, and the Lottery is its equivalent of bread and circuses. If the BBC can devote prime hours each week to promoting the Lottery, then don't expect them to host a national debate on its merits. That's going to have to come from somewhere else, but we have to have it. 

Marriage: what's up for grabs?

Amidst all the sound and fury around redefining marriage this week, I've been trying to work out what I think. The Ugley Vicar has already pointed out a lack of clear thinking in government about what marriage is, and what it is actually trying to do. 

So much of the debate seems to come down to whether or not marriage is a 'given', an institution, something which exists independently of our efforts to define or redefine it. And if it is a 'given', how much of that is up for grabs, and how much of the nature of marriage can be tweaked from culture to culture? So the Church of England, for example, has moved from a set of marriage vows where the wife promises to 'obey' and the husband to 'worship', to creating an alternative symmetrical set of vows, to taking the symmetrical vows as the norm. 

Here's Dietrich Bonhoeffer Marriage is more than your love for each other. It has a higher dignity and power, for it is God’s holy ordinance, through which He wills to perpetuate the human race till the end of time. In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in marriage you are a link in the chain of the generations, which God causes to come and to pass away to His glory, and calls into His kingdom. In your love you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind. Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more that something personal – it is a status, an office.

This sense of an office is part of the furniture of Christian thinking, whether we are thinking about leadership in the church (apostles/bishops etc.) thinking about power (kings, prophets, the place of the law), work and rest (sabbath), or relationships. There are some 'givens' which God has put in place, for our good and for the good of community and the planet. Even in secular terms, we still recognise a 'vocation', that sense of a call which comes from beyond you to take a particular place in society as teacher, healer, carer, pursuer of knowledge etc.  

Postmodern liberalism, on the other hand, doesn't recognise any givens. Everything is a social construction, everything is up for grabs. Inherited institutions, from the monarchy to the Lords to the church to marriage, carry no intrinsic authority, and have to justify their existence on the same terms as everything else. All is merit and practicality. And there's plenty to be said for this. I would much rather have a competent Bishop than one who says 'I'm the bishop of (insert), this is what I do', to justify any action. 

The political and cultural outworking of this is the extension of free choice into any and every area of life, from conception to cremation. The battle over assisted dying is the same as the battle over marriage, is individual free choice sovereign, and does anything else trump it? The proponents of euthanasia, consistently led by the BBC, will not let this one drop until they win it. 

However the flipside of this is that any principal that liberalism appeals to must be a social construct as well. You can't reject all 'given' social institutions, and then insist on innate and given moral values. The notion of 'equality' which the government is currently appealing to is a social construct too, and just as open to challenge as the institutions it is used to challenge. 

The Biblical description of marriage - the exclusive and life-long union of one man and one woman, instituted and blessed by God - is consistently affirmed from Genesis 1 to the arrival of the 'Bride' in Revelation. It is a microcosm of the human race, a reflection of the love of God for his creation, the ideal context for having and raising children (though the Bible wouldn't recognise our nuclear family, operating as an independent unit from any form of community or clan). There are things that are like marriage: a parents commitment to their children is (hopefully) life long, there are deep friendships which offer companionship, there are extended families who support the rearing of children. Marriage doesn't have a monopoly on the social goods it embodies. But that doesn't mean that other relationships which carry these social goods need to be renamed 'marriage'. 

This is not simply a matter of equality, or justice, it's a deep philosophical and cultural issue about the very structure of existence. Are we simply making it up as we go along, or is there some kind of a structure to human existence and society which actually needs to be respected and worked with? It doesn't strike me that this week has made these questions any clearer, or helped us to resolve them. 

Other bits worth reading:
Peter Ould has several posts
God and Politics notes that ignoring the public response to the 'consultation' is seen as a badge of honour by the Equalities Minister.