I just picked up on the remarkable case of Barry Trayhorn, a Pentecostal preacher who felt pressured out of his job for quoting the bible in a church. Trayhorn was a gardener at HMP Littlehey, a prison for sex offenders. At the invitation of the chaplain, Trayhorn lead some chapel services on a voluntary basis. He quoted from memory from 1 Corinthians at a service in May 2014. The relevant verses offer Jesus's forgiveness for sinners who repent and mentions a few sins - routine stuff: adultery, greed and drunkenness. Oh and homosexual practices, of course. Trayhorn, who had told the congregation he was as big a sinner as anyone so wasn't "preaching" in that sense, found himself firstly barred from taking services and then subject to a barrage of concerns about his conduct as a horticulturalist at the prison, which of course had not been raised hitherto. He resigned in November, claiming to have been harassed because of his Christian faith. He took a case to an Employment Tribunal which gave its verdict in March. Of course they found against him, saying he was not discriminated against on the grounds of his religion, "because of the way his message was received" (implying that it doesn't matter what you have actually said) and that Mr Trayhorn spoke of God's forgiveness in an "insensitive" way which "failed to have regard for the special nature of the congregation in the prison". The fact that the sex offenders present were exactly the people who arguably should hear that message if they have come to a chapel seems to have been beyond the tribunal. Trayhorn has appealed and the verdict on that is awaited.*
While born C of E, I'm religiously agnostic verging on atheist but it seems to me that Christians are now a persecuted minority in our country. I wouldn't mind so much if the same approach was applied diligently to all religions. After all, isn't the view of homosexuality in Islamic scripture identical and generally somewhat more strongly put?
But we live in a country in which the leader of the Liberal Democrats, a born again Christian, felt he had to sell out his God in exchange for votes by denying that he thought homosexual sex was a sin. (Don't tell me he thought that all along, else why did it take him a few days and several repeats of the question?) And where it has been decided that the Colston Hall venue in Bristol should be renamed, because one of the city's most generous benefactors made some of his dosh from slave trading. And in which students funded by a legacy by Rhodes campaign against his statue. So, in the once Christian country in which you can't quote from the bible in church without losing your job, here's a quiz for any politically correct readers to try.
1. Who said that the typical African was "only one degree removed from the animal" and that an ordinary African's only goal in life was "to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness"?
2. Who said "The Aryan stock is bound to triumph"?
3. Who told a black clergyman "I think your race suffers very greatly, many of them, by living among us, while ours suffers from your presence"? The same person also thought that, if slaves remained in his country "there must be the position of superior and inferior and I as much as any other man am in favour of having the superior position assigned to the white race."
4. Who claimed to be an opponent of slavery, yet owned at least 135 slaves and secretly sent bounty hunters to track one down when she ran away?
The answers are:
1. Gandhi
2. Churchill. The context was his view that China should be partitioned and colonised by European powers.
3. Abraham Lincoln
4. George Washington, though he did free his slaves outright after he had no further use for them - he did it via his will.
There is good and bad in most folks and we are all products of our time. One would have thought that the presence of statues and halls named after famous people would be a useful prompt for current generations to learn about how things were done in the past, what people thought and achieved and how views have changed. But no. So going by the quiz answers we can expect there to be very few statues left of famous historical figures. They will all be replaced by people we've never heard of but whose views were either ahead of their time or matched current prejudices, as you wish. But I'd bet they weren't all free of sin, either, relatively useless concept though I think that is.
Happy Sunday one and all!
*http://www.christianconcern.com/our-concerns/freedom-of-speech/christian-prison-worker-loses-dismissal-claim-over-insensitive-preach
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