Wednesday, April 05, 2017

Serpents and Doves

Just poking my head up from the midst of essay writing to offer some thoughts on two recent news stories. The two stories vary wildly in importance and tone, and this will feel like a strange post for that reason. But life is strange, sometimes.

The first story is that some of the money from the so-called 'tampon tax' has gone to a pro-life organisation.  You can see the liberal outrage here, and in various other articles scattered across the upright and progressive press.

I didn't hear nearly as much comment on this story from Christians as I would have liked.  Some, but not enough, and not sufficiently robust given that lives are at stake.

The second story is that apparently Cadbury and the National Trust have left out the word 'Easter' from some of their seasonal events and products.  (Although as this non-story unfolded over the course of the day, it became clear that they really hadn't).

I heard about this story from the Archbishop of York, and it made the national news as 'Church complains about...'

What in the world is wrong with us?  It's so awful at two levels.  The one level is the principle.  We seem to care more about the loss of our brand, about an affront to our symbols, than we do about the lives of the unborn.  We want to protect our privileged status more than we want to protect innocent life.  Is that really who we are?  But the second level is strategy.  Maybe there were plenty of Christians talking about Life, but they didn't make the news.  But the egg thing made the news.  The PM had to comment.  Because of course the media will seek out religious opinion on what they deem to be religious issues, and of course they will spin anything we say as 'Christians outraged by fact that society no longer accords them special privileges'.  That really shouldn't be a surprise.

Come on people.  Wise as serpents, innocent as doves.  Not the other way around.

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