People of the Way

Bigbulkyanglican has been talking a bit about an alleged PR disaster avoided by a cancer charity. Offered £3000 from a charity performance of Jerry Springer – The Opera, Maggie’s Centres were poised to accept (obviously enough) when they were contacted by Christian Voice, a campaigning group who object to JSTO on the grounds that it’s offensive (there’s swearing, lots of it) and blasphemous (in its portrayal of Jesus). Christian Voice said that accepting the donation would be a “PR disaster” for the charity.

Now, aside from the fact that this is not very nice behaviour in the first place, and is tantamount to blackmail in the second place (“refuse the donation or we’ll picket your offices” was the essential message AIUI), it’s terribly disingenuous for the organisation to claim (as they apparently did on the Today programme on Radio 4) that they helped Maggie’s Centres to avoid a PR disaster when there wouldn’t have been any PR disaster were it not for Christian Voice‘s involvement in the first place! To threaten someone with a PR disaster unless they do what you want, and then claim that you helped them when they do do what you want – is that really “help”?

In the ensuing comments, Kathryn commented that Christian Voice certainly doesn’t represent her voice, and mentioned that it was a shame that Christians stopped calling themselves “People of the Way”. I definitely agree with her. Although “Christian” isn’t at all a bad name, being based on the central figure in the faith, it has picked up lots of baggage over the centuries, and especially over the past few decades in the Western world. “People of the Way” thus has the advantage of being unfamiliar and so not carrying any unpleasant memories.

But the main reason for liking “People of the Way” is that it embodies a central truth about our faith – that we are on a journey. Christianity is not about having arrived somewhere but about going somewhere with someone. So, we should be reticent to claim absolute certainty about many things because we are not yet arrived; we should be slow to judge because we know that we will see more clearly when we reach our destination; we should be eager to help those who have fallen, because our own legs often become weary. The Way is the way Jesus trod – dangerous, difficult, unclear, messy and offensive to many.

pax et bonum

Article posted at 12:36pm on 24 February 2005
Category: Faith, Musing, Politics