Wednesday, August 31, 2005

The "2 Daniels" affair.

Daniel Scot and Daniel Nalliah recently lost a case brought against them by the "Islamic Council of Victoria" in Australia, under that state's "anti-vilification" laws. The case arose out of comments made by Daniel Scot at a seminar which caused offence to some Muslims sent to monitor the content. I first became aware of the case when I read a report of the case in the August 2005 edition of "Evangelicals Now" published in the UK.

Personally I was shocked by the report but not for the reason the correspondent
might have wished. I was dismayed by [a] what the report seemed to confirm was said at the seminar and [b] by the graceless tone of the article itself. If you
are sufficiently interested you'll need to check it out for yourself because I am not repeating that tosh here. [Evangelicals Now, August 2005, page 9]. Make up your own mind.

People have remonstrated with me that this is simply an issue of "freedom of speech". Okay, I can understand that. Maybe it is a bad idea to have a law
regulating what might/might not cause offence to people of different faiths.
Perhaps people should have the right to say crass things without fear of prosecution. I don't have a problem with that as an argument. But I do
think that this case bears further examination than it's caricature currently
allows. We must be careful to distinguish between defending the "freedom of
the pulpit" to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ, and condoning any
and every abuse of that public platform by preachers speaking "off-message".
Uncritical support of the "2 Daniels" may backfire; here are a few of my
"rules of engagement" for anyone to comment on.

1] If Christians go head to head with the law of the land they need to make sure that it is done for the right reason and in the right way. As a Christian I believe that we should apply the test of "causing no offence but the offence of the Cross",
by this standard what was said at the seminar does not pass muster. "Tap-room
theology" is for the tap-room to justify not the church, sometimes such comments are all too human [say after the London Bombings when people are
frightened] and as such can be forgivable, but they are certainly not Christlike.
I believe that we should model the grace we preach.

2] It is one thing to critique a belief system, it is something else again to single out a particular faith group for wholesale condemnation. To do this in God's
name - as the article seems to suggest - escalates the stakes again and sadly
shows that we ourselves have become Jihadists/Crusaders in our own way!

3] The Daniels perceptions of Islam may be technically correct for all I know,
but what they say the Koran teaches isn't automatically translated into direct
action by it's readers. This is self evident, not all Muslims turn to terrorism.
Which suggests to me that there are shades of opinion within Islam. It could be that Daniel Scot has a particular view of Islam borne out of his own difficult time in Pakistan. If so, why didn't some church leader at one of the series of seminars say to him, "Brother, I am concerned that some of the things you have been saying will appear ungracious and unkind. It may be that what
you have said could bring the gospel into disrepute and such language is unlikely to win over our Muslim neighbours. It may be that your teaching is deeply influenced by the very difficult experiences you have had in Pakistan. Let's talk it over". No evangelical church I know of allows uncritical access to it's public platfrom for people to speak "off-message".Perhaps if the Australian evangelical church had drawn a distinction between defending the "freedom of the pulpit" against state interference while dissociating itself from the intemperate sentiments expressed on that occasion it would not now be caught up in an unholy mess, which can only be described as a "culture war" - which has nothing to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and has more in common with ultra-right wing politics. This campaign may prove to be very costly - not least to Daniel Scot himself.

4] It is very unscientific but I've trawled through some Christian websites which comment on Islam. It seems to me that the discussion is almost always in terms of "threat" or a coming "Clash of Civilisations". A few seem to relish the prospect of a war between Islam and The West. The question I want to raise is have Christians so sold out to "The West" that we have lost sight of where our true citizenship actually lies? Is the church engaged in a "culture war" at the expense of proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ? Do we have confidence in the Gospel - or do we give way to fear and hostility towards those we are called to love? This alone may distinguish us from the far-right.

Concluding Thought:
Let's assume that the world is indeed destined to spiral down into a "Clash of Civilisations", imagine the world 50 years from now living in the aftermath of a Third World War, and attention turns to the role played by the evangelical church in the run up Italicto that conflict. Will they conclude that the church fanned the flames of that conflict, or that they modelled grace to a world bent on war?










"Jack" Swift (1911-1975), by his son.

My father was born before the British Empire peaked in it's power and, I guess like many of his generation, shared in it's prejudices and in it's finest hour. My father's father died before I was born, but I am told that he was a lovely man. My father's elder brother, "Jim" was killed in action in 1918, aged 19. There is no known grave.

My father could have won a scholarship to a fine school, but rheumatic fever put an end to that dream. Those profligate interwar years did not give second chances. But like many others so rejected he would go on to be a skilled craftsman and a fine NCO when war came again.

He volunteered for the Royal Air Force before the desperate need of Britain's hard pressed army would draft even those with weakened hearts. He married my mother and after a weekend honeymoon in Ilkley, not far from their home town of Bradford, left for the war not to return home for four years. He was with Eisenhower's forces when they invaded North Africa. He flew on board DC-3s [or"Dakotas" as the British called them], ferrying supplies. From Africa he continued his war into Italy and stood on Mount Vesuvius when it erupted in 1944. He ended the war by Lake Como, and I think he had grown to love Italy, though he would never have the opportunity to return.

Having been de-mobbed, he never left these shores again, unless you count our annual trip on the "Yorkshire Lady" around the bay at Scarborough. My parents worked hard in those post
war years ( which had brought no spoils of war) to provide for these little luxuries for me and my older brother and sister; these yearly breaks were the highlight of our childhood.
I remember him coming to my aid as a child when once upon a time I got my head stuck in a porthole of that ship. The time he defended me against my mum when my rabbit invaded the house and made a mess in the home she worked so hard to keep nice. He always used to buy me two ounces of wine gums each evening on his way home from work at the CO-OP department store, "Sunwin House". There were times too when he could be infuriating and opinionated, at least from the perspective of a know-all teenager. I think he aspired to be middle-class and he chose to be a poorly paid salesman who wore a suit to work rather than be a better paid blue-collar worker. I think he was immensely proud that my siblings went to university.

And I think he envied the opportunities our generation took for granted and little appreciated, but I don't think he begrudged us. I don't think he was a bitter man, but perhaps he was a disappointed one, which is a pity because he was content with little. And it is a great blessing
to be content with little.

He became ill - although we didn't realise how seriously -the year before he was due to retire. He was in pain and my last recollection of him alive was when I helped him out of bed and onto the commode. I think he must have hated the humiliation of his teenage son helping him so. But that was the first time I believe I actually did something for him.

Although I think I take after my mother's side of the family, there are times when I look in the mirror - I remind myself of my father.