Faith and hate
My day yesterday was book-ended by raised voices and hatred. Both outbursts involved people of the same faith bitterly arguing with each other.
As is my wont, I awakened to the tones of the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4. The day’s controversy centred on the news that Dr Jeffrey John – the gay Anglican Dean of St Albans, who lives in a civil partnership, was being considered to become the Bishop of Southwark.
The raised voices came in a debate between two Anglican priests, in which one, Canon Chris Sugden – Executive Secretary of something called Anglican Mainstream – raised his voice in protest against the proposed appointment.
He was enraged that a priest who had indulged in an “active gay relationship” with the man whom he now enjoyed a civil partnership, was now being considered to become a Bishop. The Canon dismissed the suggestion that Dr John was now celibate. I already sensed that the discussion had veered into the priestly private life further than felt comfortable at 7.10 in the morning. But the Canon ploughed on.
He described an active homosexual, who had now become celibate, as akin to “someone entering the Cabinet having once fiddled his expenses”. The climax to the Canon’s wrath was that his fellow Canon had “never apologised” for his journey from active homosexuality to celibacy.
Last night I found myself sitting in the sanctuary of the liberal Synagogue in London’s St John’s Wood. It was a rare debate staged by the group Independent Jewish Voices, in which two liberal Rabbi’s and a Palestinian human rights lawyer debated whether human rights in Israel are in crisis.
As they spoke, one man shouted “rubbish”, another, “crap”, and yet another, “go home!” The Rabbis were shouted at with the same ferocity that greeted the contribution from the quietly spoken Palestinian woman.
As she spoke toward the end of the debate, yet another member of the almost entirely Jewish audience shouted “terrorist” and “fascist”. I interpreted this as an attack on the Palestinian. But I was reliably later informed that the shout came from a more orthodox Jewish believer and was reserved for a member of the liberal wing of the Jewish faith, sitting eight seats away from him.
Is violent verbal dispute a necessary concomitant to religious belief, whatever the faith? In what other walk of life can you expected to be bombarded by such anger?