THE FLOTILLA COALITION
I was asked to speak at the Flotilla Coalition's interfaith event, 'Faith in the Time of Genocide' held in Sicily, joining the meeting on line, from London.
This is the text I prepared.
My son was 8. I complained to the Catholic school he was attending. At morning assembly, the story of Abraham being asked by God to sacrifice his son, had been read, without comment or explanation. I was horrified.
Abraham loads up the donkey with wood to burn his son, arrives at the chosen spot and then comes the most chilling verse, “he bound his son, placed him on top of the altar, reached out his hand and took the knife to slay him.”
Throughout the scriptures and Judeo-Christian tradition Abraham’s faith is celebrated as the gold standard for obedience and righteousness, the paradigm of devotion and a supreme ethical example.
God acts in violation of human logic, morality and personal love and yet the believer trusts God irrespective, even at the loss of his own child and loved one.
It earns Abraham the title, ‘Father of Faith.”
Consolidating the tradition, Abraham’s actions become the archetype, foreshadowing the Christian claim that God as Father, is willing to sacrifice his only son upon the cross.
It teaches submission, the relinquishment of the possession of life in deference to faith, the abandonment of our wishes and treasures in fulfillment of a greater religious mandate.
Hegel championed in philosophy, the ethical requirement for rules that govern society ought to be observed and the absolute mandate that we must protect our families.
Kierkegaard acknowledges that Abraham’s actions are unethical but argues that we must take a teleological perspective and suspend our human morality for the higher duty of obedience to God.
This approach epitomises the religious approach within which Jesus was raised as a child.
Sacrifice and suffering were required to obtain forgiveness, the slaying of a living being in return for absolution, cattle, sheep, goats, and birds. From this, the sacrifice of a child, even the child of God was but a step away.
The biblical suffering servant of Isaiah exemplifying a path of pain to bear the sins of others and the Maccabean Martyrs were fresh in the memories of Jesus’s day, those who had chosen horrific suffering, death and torture to keep God’s Law.
When resistance grew around Jesus, he too fell victim to this religious distortion that glorifies suffering and death and made the greatest mistake of his life.
Having at first avoided the traps set for him by the religious leaders by taking a radically loving path, he had slowly became radicalised.
When he found himself on trial facing martyrdom, instead of using his intelligence, personality and quick witted diplomacy, he became arrogant, supercilious, and irritating, provoking his death.
Instead of arresting the grotesque tradition of martyrdom and violence and stemming the flow of blood, he caused the deaths of so many after him.
It was a betrayal of the love with which he began.
The tradition of sanctioned violence within religion is a devastating cancer.
The usurpation of human ethics in deference to a God of our imagination, speculation and philosophical musings is a catastrophe.
In the first few hundred years, a conservative estimate of those Christians who were martyred, following Jesus’s example, amounts to around 3,500. Many were eager for martyrdom. One wrote that he wanted to be ‘ground by the teeth of wild beasts to become bread for Christ.’
Violence is endemic in the Bible.
The amount of lives lost at God’s command in the Bible is calculated at 25 million.
Involving the destruction of 31 city states and countless rural communities. The great flood, the smiting of the first born, the drowning of the Egyptian army, the plague upon Israel, the slaughtering of Assyrians, the genocide orders upon the Amalekites, the Midianites and in Jericho.
These stories led to the Crusades and the slaughtering of over 3 million.
Chillingly, there is a claim that religious people throughout history are responsible for 250 million deaths.
God is dangerous.
Religion is dangerous.
The claim to faith is dangerous.
It relies not on fact but fiction, the imagination, the acrobatics of human thinking, the projections of human need, the games and deceptions humans enjoy playing.
Because it can take humanities worst and packages it neatly up into a God that not only permits our savagery but orders it.
The world has had enough of blood, and violence and death. Has had enough of the indoctrination of children, and cultures and peoples with religions that gestate tomorrow's warriors, that breeds enmity and division, hatred and misunderstanding.
The biblical teaching is that there is no greater love than when a person lays down their life for their friends. It is a misguided claim. It leads to tribalistic behaviour, to splintered loyalties, to us and thems, and to a willingness to regard the thems as expendable in providing safety for one’s own.
We need peaceful people.
We need those who cherish life.
Who cherish all people’s lives.
Who recognise every other person as their sister and brother, their mother and father, their aunt and their uncle, their very own child.
People have rage inside them. History is so replete with suffering that it is an ocean of tears that can drown us all.
In the discussions that take place around Israel and the Palestinians, the level of grief is incalculable and paralysing. In the knowledge of that, adding more of the same cannot be a solution or the means to peace.
Peace requires an unimaginable courage and grace, bred not sadly from our religious traditions, but from a profound engagement with love. The love that every new born craves, because they cannot survive without it. The love that every child craves, because it provides them security and a sense of self. The love that ever adult craves, because it crafts them and creates them into becoming a rounded, compassionate, empathic person. The Love that the world needs, because it enables the human family to ensure everyone can have their human rights respected and enjoy an equitable experience of well being.
Love requires us to walk, as Mahatma Gandhi bid us, in the other’s shoes, to understand their plight, their pain, their suffering, so that, we can kindle within us the necessary understanding to do all we can to alleviate their agony.
Inspiration can be taken from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, from the peace process in Northern Ireland , from Gandhi’s Ahimsa campaign of non-violent civil disobedience exerting Satyagraha, the truth force, to achieve change.
If there is to be change, faith communities have to recognise the elements within their own traditions that plant the seeds of violence, and the approach to God and religion that brings those seeds to a grim harvest of bloodshed and revenge. They must be wise, spiritual and brave enough to be willing to reform their traditions, write new scriptures and develop more enlightened teaching.
If there is to be change, one-sided rhetoric and single focus condemnation must be replaced with language that points to possibility, connection, hope and reconciliation; with experiments that attempt new forms of cooperation and trust building; with grass root initiatives calling for international resources and political provisions to provide both sides with the assurance of safety and of statehood.
In our own day, and in this situation, inspiration is found in the vital witness of the flotilla, from a group of brave people, committed to nonviolence and peaceful protest, pointing to the ultimate vision of a world order based on Love, compassion, justice and equality.
ARCHBISHOP JONATHAN BLAKE - MY LIFE - PART ONE
ARCHBISHOP JONATHAN BLAKE - MY LIFE - PART TWO
I AM PROUD OF MY WRITING, FOR JESUS’S SAKE, THAT HAS HAD ME FOUND INNOCENT IN HEAVEN, BUT TWICE A CRIMINAL ON THE EARTH. THE FIRST IN 1990 WHEN I WROTE A BIBLICAL TEXT ON THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT IN PEACEFUL PROTEST ABOUT THE BOMBING OF YOUNG IRAQI RECRUITS DURING THE FIRST GULF WAR. THE SECOND, IN 2016 WHEN I WROTE ON MY BLOG, TO ALERT THE PUBLIC ABOUT A PAEDOPHILE, AND WAS SUCCESSFUL IN FORCING THE AUTHORITIES TO STOP HIM HAVING ACCESS TO CHILDREN. THERE WAS ALMOST A THIRD! IN 1997, WHEN I WAS ARRESTED FOR NAILING MY PROPOSALS FOR REFORM OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND ON THE DOOR OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL. WORDS ARE POWERFUL MESSAGES THAT CHALLENGE CORRUPTION, CONFRONT THE WICKED AND CREATE A BETTER WORLD. JESUS IS THE WORD OF GOD AND HIS FOLLOWERS ARE CALLED TO COMMUNICATE HIS WORDS, IRRESPECTIVE OF THE COST.
"You brave, courageous and wonderful man. To stand up for the truth
in the face of suppression and oppression is truly an act of a pure heart."
posted by Bishop Jonathan Blake | 5:04 PM
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