On Taking My First Church Service

This evening I did something that I've never done before and which I have been dreading all week. I took a service at my local Church, the Isleworth Congregational.

A few weeks ago our long-serving Pastor the Revd. Antony W. Ball retired after forty years of thorough, loyal and dedicated service to our Church. As our Pastor it was always a pleasure to listen to Antony whenever he was in the pulpit. The scholarly, logical and analytical way in which he dissected the texts always captured my attention and even on my tiredest days my concentration seldom drifted. We have had some excellent visiting preachers, but speaking personally Antony's sermons were always the ones I gained the most from.

Fortunately although he has stepped down from the post to take well-deserved retirement he has assured us that he is happy to continue to preach to us, as well of course as serving still as a Church member. For this we will be eternally grateful (npi), because he is in my view irreplaceable.

Whilst I am under no illusions about my own abilities as a "preacher", I stepped into the breach tonight as I and all of my fellow Deacons attempt to fill the massive void created while he spends a few weeks away from the Church. Although I have spoken at many a political and public meeting, to audiences of up to 3000 in number, giving a sermon in a Church is so thoroughly different that it is reasonable to consider tonight as having been "my first time". I was very nervous.

I spoke (rather than preached, I guess) about the logic of Christianity and the way in which the laws given to us by God are for our own benefit and for that of wider society rather than being arbitrary or gratuitous. It was in essence a justification from a Christian perspective of the principles that guided me throughout my time as a community activist.

In numbers terms it was a modest audience, but those who were there seemed to think I did okay. Ideally I should have spoken for longer as the service finished about ten minutes earlier than usual. If there is a next time, I will know better.

Fundamentalism and the New Atheism - a Marriage Made in Heaven

Although I am a Christian I have no problem whatsoever with atheists. Why should I have? In any tolerant society people are free to believe, or not believe, whatever they choose.

One cannot impose religious belief down the barrel of a gun. Neither can one do so by mocking and denigrating the sincerely-held opinions of those who believe differently. At best, all one can do is to argue one’s case and hope to plant a seed from which something in time will grow.

Atheists are just as capable of thinking good thoughts, and of doing good deeds, as people of faith. Indeed some atheists would argue that they are more capable of so doing because they do not require the promise of posthumous reward in order to do the right thing by their fellow human beings. Such an argument misunderstands some of the basic tenets of Christian belief, but if I may I shall bank that one for another day.

What I do find depressing is what appears to me to have been the recent emergence of a New Atheism, defined not so much by the fact that the practitioner does not believe in God as by the insistence that I mustn’t either. Without any hint of irony the New Atheist lambasts Christianity, along with other faiths, with charges of intolerance and bigotry.

Despite the apparent lack of a belief in God, the New Atheist seems to spend the largest part of his or her waking time thinking, speaking and writing of nothing else. Indeed it is both to their shame and to mine that God seems to feature more in the thoughts of New Atheists than at times He does in mine.

Now although I call myself a Christian there is a type of Christian that I don’t care very much for. We’ve all met them – the pious belief that they know something you don’t, the unwavering confidence they have in the rightness of their own lifestyle and in the error, by implication, of everybody else’s. Their propensity to view their own take on the meaning of life as though it were The Undeniable Truth and the lack of provision that follows from such a mindset for opinions others may have which may digress, even in some minor fleeting detail, from their own.

Consider the approach to the debate adopted by the New Atheist and tell me how it differs, in any significant way, from that of the closed-mind Christian fundamentalist, or indeed the fundamentalist of any religion. The arrogant smugness and inanely-grinning, head-wobbling, self-satisfied superiority of Those Who Know What’s Best For Us mirrors so perfectly the tiresome, unrelenting persistence of the fundamentalist in pursuing the belief system that he or she knows is the one and only true belief system, which casts the lie upon all others.

To paraphrase a poster much seen on the buses and the London Underground – some people are Christians, get over it. And for those who profess to be guided by the Bible, don’t be so impertinent as to assume that your interpretation of its teachings is any more valid than mine, or your understanding of them any greater.

Why?

"Master," said John, "we saw a man driving out devils in your name, but as he is not one of us we tried to stop him." Jesus said to him, "Do not stop him, for he who is not against you is on your side." (Luke 9:49)
It's okay, relax. You know that I am a Christian and that I go to church, but I am no theologian and neither am I anything like good enough as a person to even begin to presume to sit in judgement upon others.

But whether you are a Christian, a follower of another religion or indeed of none, it is evident to most people that there are teachings contained in the Holy Book that serve as a useful guide to us in the conduct of our everyday lives. The above quote, delivered to us at our Church this morning by the Revd. John Kafwanka (an Isleworthian!) set me thinking about why it was that, nearly nineteen years ago, I helped found the ICG (then known as the Isleworth Community Group) and why now, in 2012, I continue to give it my support.

Let me approach where I am going from a slightly more contemporary angle. I don't think this will be the first time on this blog that I will have quoted the chorus of the rock epic 2112:

"We are the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx
Our great computers fill Our hallowed halls
We are the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx
All the gifts of life are held within Our walls".
For the disciples, they were the few who had been chosen from amongst the many to answer a special calling, and it must have been galling for them that somebody who was not one of their number was performing successful healing work in the name of Jesus. So they tried to stop him, without any thought of course for the beneficiary of the stranger's good deed.

In the fictitious 2112 the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx were the custodians of all knowledge and happiness, having defeated the Elder Race in a battle for control of the Planets of the Solar Federation. When the boy found the guitar by the waterfall and presented it to them they crushed it nervously underfoot, for it was a relic of a bygone age which had not been under their dominion.

Seasoned local community watchers will know where this article is heading. Whether it is the St. John's residents and their successful campaign to save their community centre, or the organisers of the Brentford Festival, or for that matter the ICG and its many works on behalf of the community of which it is an integral part, any positive acts which have been brought about independently by the community (I believe they call us "plebs") must either be denied or destroyed.

I have reflected recently upon how this mentality continues to prevail in the highest echelons of the local authority in Hounslow. Those who trouble to browse Facebook or the local community forums will have seen how those of us who consider it our mission to empower the grass roots have continued to be abused and vilified, even in our attempted "post political" incarnation.

Demonstrably it is not because we stand, but because of what we stand for.