It was reported in the Guardian on Thursday that David Cameron believes the 'Easter message' is about hard work and responsibility. In an interview he gave to Premier Radio, he argued that the heart of Christian faith is "compassion, forgiveness, kindness, hard work and responsibility", and that "‘Love thy neighbour’ is a doctrine we can all apply to our lives – at school, at work, at home and with our families". Mr Cameron admits to being "fuzzy" about the "finer points" of the faith, but having read this, I can't help but feel he's hazy about rather more than that; indeed, I found myself wondering if we're reading the same Bible!
The version of Christianity put forward in this article misses the point of the Gospel completely and wilfully. Throughout the centuries, the church has wrestled with who Jesus is and what he accomplished, meaning for example that the creeds took hundreds of years to thrash out, and that the Reformation of the sixteenth century had such a turbulent effect on European society. However, what it never has successfully done is to claim that Jesus Christ was crucified for preaching the kind of inoffensive, motherhood-and-apple-pie 'faith' that Cameron talks about here. Rather, at the heart of the Gospel is the scandalous idea that, contrary to the conform-or-die mentality of the Roman Empire that brutally supressed descent and used crucifixion as the ultimate way of denying the humanity of its enemies, there is no such thing as a person that doesn't matter to God. That includes the outcasts, the poor, the sinners, tax collectors and prostitutes of Jesus' day, and inconveniently for Cameron's neoliberal ideology, it also includes the unemployed, immigrants, disabled people, single parents, working poor and all the other groups regularly demonised these days.
It strikes me that the neoliberal consensus that has emerged over the past thirty-five years, the emergence of which I've discussed in an earlier post of the nature of the Establishment, values people in terms of their economic output and potential as consumers. This means that those who are less well-off, or in our context less able or unable to contribute to UK plc., are considered less worthwhile human beings than those in work, unless they're pensioners as they're more likely to vote than any other demographic. Moreover, the changes we've seen under Cameron's government that have made employment less secure, led to zero-hours contracts creating instability for a great number of people, and seen record numbers of working people needing to call upon food banks to survive, have added to a sense that human worth has been reduced to economic utility manifested in the betterment of those who are already wealthy, rather than seeing human beings as intrinsically worthwhile, as mattering for their own sakes.
The Gospel stands, therefore, in sharp contrast to a worldview that fails to value all people as God does, as evidenced by Jesus' laying down his life on the cross and rising again for all, not just a privileged few. Jesus bashed up against Roman might not because he was a Jesus Barabbas-style bandit, but because he loved with a freedom that simply proved too hot for religious and secular power alike to handle. If you read of the events of Holy Week, as I strongly encourage you to do, you’ll see that Jesus offended the authorities by challenging how things were done in the Temple, questioning the exclusion of the poor, sick and marginalised from Israel’s religious life, and crossing boundaries to reach out to those most in need of God’s love. This wasn't in the script as far as either the Temple authorities or the Roman governor were concerned, and they sought to remove a potential thorn in their side in decisive fashion.
The version of Christianity put forward in this article misses the point of the Gospel completely and wilfully. Throughout the centuries, the church has wrestled with who Jesus is and what he accomplished, meaning for example that the creeds took hundreds of years to thrash out, and that the Reformation of the sixteenth century had such a turbulent effect on European society. However, what it never has successfully done is to claim that Jesus Christ was crucified for preaching the kind of inoffensive, motherhood-and-apple-pie 'faith' that Cameron talks about here. Rather, at the heart of the Gospel is the scandalous idea that, contrary to the conform-or-die mentality of the Roman Empire that brutally supressed descent and used crucifixion as the ultimate way of denying the humanity of its enemies, there is no such thing as a person that doesn't matter to God. That includes the outcasts, the poor, the sinners, tax collectors and prostitutes of Jesus' day, and inconveniently for Cameron's neoliberal ideology, it also includes the unemployed, immigrants, disabled people, single parents, working poor and all the other groups regularly demonised these days.
It strikes me that the neoliberal consensus that has emerged over the past thirty-five years, the emergence of which I've discussed in an earlier post of the nature of the Establishment, values people in terms of their economic output and potential as consumers. This means that those who are less well-off, or in our context less able or unable to contribute to UK plc., are considered less worthwhile human beings than those in work, unless they're pensioners as they're more likely to vote than any other demographic. Moreover, the changes we've seen under Cameron's government that have made employment less secure, led to zero-hours contracts creating instability for a great number of people, and seen record numbers of working people needing to call upon food banks to survive, have added to a sense that human worth has been reduced to economic utility manifested in the betterment of those who are already wealthy, rather than seeing human beings as intrinsically worthwhile, as mattering for their own sakes.
The Gospel stands, therefore, in sharp contrast to a worldview that fails to value all people as God does, as evidenced by Jesus' laying down his life on the cross and rising again for all, not just a privileged few. Jesus bashed up against Roman might not because he was a Jesus Barabbas-style bandit, but because he loved with a freedom that simply proved too hot for religious and secular power alike to handle. If you read of the events of Holy Week, as I strongly encourage you to do, you’ll see that Jesus offended the authorities by challenging how things were done in the Temple, questioning the exclusion of the poor, sick and marginalised from Israel’s religious life, and crossing boundaries to reach out to those most in need of God’s love. This wasn't in the script as far as either the Temple authorities or the Roman governor were concerned, and they sought to remove a potential thorn in their side in decisive fashion.
They found a ready ally in one of Jesus' own disciples; scholars have speculated that Judas might’ve been a zealot, looking for a military Messiah who would overthrow the hated Romans by force. If so, he was probably angry with, and disappointed by, the sort of Christ Jesus turned out to be. Moreover, when it came to it, the same crowds who rejoiced at Jesus' arrival were ready to scream 'crucify' when stirred up by religious leaders. There was something about the freedom with which Jesus was able to love and challenge the barriers we slam up, the way we create an 'us' and 'them', which was deeply threatening then and remains so today. After all, as I said earlier, Jesus wasn't stripped naked, beaten, crowned with thorns and nailed to a cross for preaching motherhood and apple pie! Crucifixion was not just a form of capital punishment, but a punishment designed to be as cruel as possible and to strip its victims of all human dignity.
The cross of Christ, then, stands in opposition to a Roman empire that sought to enforce conformity, and to value human life in of itself as worth nothing. It still stands against those things in our culture that enable the misuse of power to the determent of human flourishing. I'm increasingly convinced, therefore, that resurrection is about the emphatic rejection of everything crucifixion stands and stood for. It's as clear a demonstration as possible that the power of love made visible in utter weakness is stronger than violence, than the worst of human nature. Put simply, contrary to the whole framework which Roman rule operated under, there really is no such thing as a person who doesn't matter, because there's no-one who's outside of the reach of the love of God.
I fear that Mr Cameron's twee theology, that so readily creates a 'them' and 'us' society (think strivers against skivers, and other spurious dichotomies), doesn't hold water when set against the reality of Holy Week, of the cross and resurrection. I'm sorry, but unless I'm missing something, I don't see where hard work or responsibility comes into what I've outlined above. The biblical narratives present a God who's all about overflowing love, reckless love that acts indiscriminately to include both the 'good' and respectable and the outcasts and misfits, and is no respecter of status, wealth or economic utility. Above all, this love is a gift, unearned and unmerited, not a reward for hard work. Mr Cameron should try reading the New Testament occasionally. He might learn something!
