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A
record number of people came to Lichfield Cathedral for the four main
Christmas services last weekend. We don't know why but congregations
have been increasing for several years. One reason may well be people's
sense that our world has cut loose from its moorings in Christian values
and in a belief in a good God who gives us wise teaching on how we
should live together under his laws. Those who came wanted to put the
Christ back into Christmas and into our national life.
Last week came a government announcement that, after all, we would not
be relying on evidence in court gained by torture. It is shocking that
there should have been any uncertainty about this through the year. It
is even more shocking that the Western Alliance should be deliberately
putting themselves and us outside the law by setting up
extra-territorial prison camps and by sending suspects clandestinely to
places like Syria which our governments routinely condemn for abuse of
detainees. |
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Do we
want to be outlaws? Where our habeas corpus and all the other hard-won
rights of our citizens? Is it true that a neighbour with a grudge could
accuse us of having a link with a terror cell and that we could be
dragged out of bed without warning, taken somewhere abroad, left to rot
for months without being told the evidence against us and be
"interrogated" until we confess?
We used to tell our children that such things happened under the Nazis
and the Soviets because they had abandoned the Christian principles that
their nations were founded on but that it couldn't happen here. The
fundamental values for a Christian country are justice, fairness and
equity. Of course the 9/11 attacks called for emergency powers. Of
course we have to trust our governments and give them the benefit of the
doubt under such circumstances because they have access to information
which we do not. It's easier to criticize than to govern.
But even in those first few days of mourning after 9/11 the Dean of
Washington National Cathedral urged that "we become not the evil we
deplore." Representative Barbara Lee took up this theme and reminded
Congress how it had abandoned its own constitutional responsibilities
when it launched America into years of war in Vietnam and how at the
time Senators had said that they had thereby subverted the Constitution
of the United States.
Dangerous though al-Qaeda might be, an even greater danger threatens us:
that we might become the thing we hate - killing the innocent,
alienating people of good will, imposing our will wrongly on other
nations.
Lichfield's famous citizen Dr Samuel Johnson often castigated as
hypocrites those who talk of freedom when they force others: "How is
it," he asked, "that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the
drivers of Negroes?"
We have seen this year that both the US and the EU know that their
dumping of subsidized produce on very poor nations causes starvation and
poverty but so far they insist on their own "freedom" to trade with
developing countries without barriers plus their own "freedom" to erect
barriers against poor countries.
Another piece of good news last week was that the government has decided
that foreign languages will be taught to everyone in school again. It
is absurd that a trading nation like ours should think that it can get
good markets without specialists who can speak the local languages. But
even more important is the fact that we are all to a certain extent
trapped in our own world view unless we can think in another language.
It's easy to see this in the case of major US politicians taking rash
decisions without local knowledge or understanding; but we do not lag
far behind them in ignorance. If schools can specialize in sport or
performing arts, could they not also specialize in Mandarin or Polish?
It would do an immense amount for world understanding.
My prayer for 2006 is that our MP's and MEP's will not put up any longer
with laws or practices which are deeply un-Christian but
rather that they will reclaim on behalf of us all the obligation of our
government and its allies to allow everyone access to real justice.
We must win the struggle against terrorism by honourable means, not
dishonourable, by a democracy which is truly democratic rather than
subject to the highest bidders. When God wanted to sort out the world
he didn't send an army but a baby.
If we follow his guidance in 2006 we can rebuild our battered nation on
the principle of fairness for all and on the truth about Christ which
alone can set us truly free.
Jonathan Gledhill
Bishop of Lichfield
New Year 2006 |