It looks like the demonstrators at St Pauls are going to bring down the Church before the system! The challenge by the demonstrators strikes at the heart of one of the key Christian stories about Jesus throwing the money lenders out of the Temple. It may not be the same but it has enough of a ring to resonate and cause Christian leaders to perform gyrations of logic that make compelling viewing.
Now I shall retreat into the safety of my atheist temple and pull up the drawbridge – abandon hope all ye who enter!
On one hand we are told that the UK is an increasingly secular society.
On the other hand, the resignation of the Dean of St Pauls Cathedral was the lead item on the BBC and Ch4 news last night.
Accepted, there were extenuating circumstances that made this a more newsworthy story – but who would have thought that today’s media would ever lead their news with a story about a priest quitting his job?
If they don’t print the trivial stuff then they might actually have to put in something that is really important. This is what the celebrity culture is all about – opiate to the masses who are more concerned about who’s been seen in each other’s company and pictures of people going about their normal life. The mechanics and finance of government is boring, and so gets relegated to less obvious parts of the media unless a politician manages to cross the line to the celebrity side and the media can rake up lots of stories.
I don’t buy newspapers.
I’m a non-believer too, so won’t be trying to make Biblical analogies with money lenders and temples. However, I’m horrified by the way the protesters have treated one of our nation’s greatest buildings. If their grievances are with the Stock Exchange or big businesses, why not go and camp next to their entrances? (Perhaps because they wouldn’t dare?) If it was a protest again the Church fair enough (although I don’t think “protesting” should mean pitching tents, a recent trend that’s becoming rather tiresome). But it isn’t. They are taking advantage of the charitableness of the church.
What next? A protest against second homes involving setting up camp in front of an old people’s home? Or a protest against big high street chains involving barricading the entrance to a charity shop with tents, forcing it to close and lose money?
Jonathan, I agree that tented occupation is passée and adds nothing to the protest at hand. Of course, they need a stunt for the media, which in itself is ironic as they bow to the commercial notion of ‘all PR is good PR’.
Anyway, where were they a month, six months, a year ago? The problem hasn’t changed, why now?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International
Dada!
We live in a spectacular society, that is, our whole life is surrounded by an immense accumulation of spectacles. Things that were once directly lived are now lived by proxy. Once an experience is taken out of the real world it becomes a commodity. As a commodity the spectacular is developed to the detriment of the real. It becomes a substitute for experience.
Hence Clive does what he has to do, viz:
He will not buy the commodity! He wants to get real and to do that:
Now I shall retreat into the safety of my atheist temple and pull up the drawbridge – abandon hope all ye who enter!
Lord Soley,
If you have visited the site you can considerthe relevance of this fact better than I can describe it from here. But the Temple Market Jesus disrupted was located between the garrison of the Temple Guard and the Roman Fortress Antonia. WHile he is ofen reported as having stirred multitudes he did this alone and got away unscathed.
This act made it certain that the religious and Roman authorities would cooperate to crucify a very peopular Gallilean member of a royal house during a holiday with tens as many as usual residents around Jerusalem. While Jesus did many rihgt wing and conservative things when he did play the games Labour likes to follow he was in a rather high league — is that similar to the folks out there at St. Pauls?
This story is more newsworthy than first noted.
At last those who tell us they belong to the club of Christ are turning to their book of road maps, called a Bible, and are following the route to salvation that is laid out for them in it.
This is an enormous turning point. And it has been a long time coming.
At last, those who have a calling are turning their back on others who dictate from outside their reference book, the ones who want to destroy their common purpose by the back door. Now they are refusing to play ball.
These men will no longer be bamboozled into brutality of the people who clearly, and without realising it, have asked for sanctuary on the steps of that great Cathederal.
These men of faith should be heralded for their bravery, not scorned.
I am persuaded that “The Creator” designed the human lifeform with an innate series of seven “sacramental-energies”;
(check also via “Lifestreams” by David Boadella);
and that the Vocation & Mission of Religion should be Covenantal & Moral; not dominantly contractual & “ethical”;
to be ever protecting and nurturing of all seven innate energy-centres, in each human-individual.
And so (thereto-faithful) should be the Mission of Governance, and of all other civilisational sectors.
In a challenging sense, it all depends what you mean by ___ (that term):
“Protest-‘against'” (???)
“a-theist”
“non-believer”
“Purpose”
————
But here am I, 80+ years old and having to try daily to as it were report back to The- my-Creator that I am still unable to find any religion, or indeed any human-development institution, truly providing such Service;
nor do I find any Body willing and able to donn that Responsibility (and Response-Ability).
—————-
So there appears to be some positive sense in wanting have this whole “What Would Jesus Do ?” Issue peacefully & ‘healthily’ carried-forward, and kept very much on-the-table.
=======================
You know Miles, what made me think of all this in more detail, was Richard Dawkins.
He feels the idea of a higher being, in any respect, is a con. Or, the opium of the people.
My first thought was, well opium in this context may be a good high without the threat associated physically. Of course that is not accurate. As religion is a threat to our person on many levels.
However, Dawkins complaint is mainly aimed at Christianity. Which I find interesting. And his citing of Genesis and the creation his big issue.
Yet, when you look at it in more detail, the separation between Creationism and the Big Bang theory draws closer together the more cosmologists stumble on how the universe came into its own.
In fact, the big bang ‘theory’ virtually recreates Genesis in detail. And if you then consider when this concept in that scroll was written, the similarity is even more staggering. Because they had no actual knowledge of the cosmos or quantum physics.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FPUutjtqfw
Its the time frame that is so remarkable. Seconds and the universe is created from nothing at all. Miraculous.
Yet Cern still searches for the connection with gravity.