I live about 3 miles away from the statue of Baden-Powell who started the Scout movement which has apparently attracted some 55 million members. This boarded up statue was erected on the quayside at Poole because it shows Baden-Powell looking across to Brownsea Island where the first Scout camp took place. I took this picture which shows the compromise position now adopted for the statue. In the initial adrenaline rush following the demolition of the Colston statue in Bristol the police advised its removal to a safe place, but quickly the local council decided simply to board it up, for its own safety, after vigorous protest against its removal by residents of the area and many Scouts. To me it stands, presently, as a symbol of the fact that all of us are meant to conform, or else...
If we don't conform to the present doctrine of abortion which allowed the killing of 205.000 babies in the womb in 2018 we have no concern for the rightful choices of women. If we don't conform to enthusiastic support of Gay marriage we are homophobic. Now the pressure is to agree that trans people are exactly what they want to call themselves. So a man is a woman if that is what they say they are and a woman is a man if that's what they say they are. I by no means support all that the erudite J K Rowling says about transgenderism but I did read her well considered, brilliant and compassionate essay on the subject in which she is clearly in sympathy with the position of many trans people and wants to support them but writes out of real concern for the safety of women and has even suggested (horror of horrors) that it is only women who menstruate. The abuse, the crudity of the language, the vileness of the way some people have responded to this is genuinely sickening.
Which brings us to the latest issue on which we are meant to conform and that is with regard to Black Lives Matter. Now here we have to tread with great care. For you only need to put one word wrong or raise a question that doesn't fit the doctrinal framework and you are in deep trouble. Following the shocking killing of George Floyd I didn't rush out a view on twitter because I was both nervous of appearing to say the wrong thing by accident and I was also aware that I could be trying to say the right thing just to give a good impression of myself. The pressure is there to make sure you conform. So, I hate racism and I've preached against racism. I had a father who was politically very right wing but in whom I never observed a trace of racism. He employed people continually within the building trade, but the colour of a person's skin was never an issue in offering someone a job. When I first went to minister in South Africa his one question was: You won't be preaching in a white's only church will you? I guess his view on this influenced me and I've always believed that all people are of equal value and the colour of a person's skin is of no relevance in this. I've lectured on the subject of slavery with reference to the Bible and have declared that I think the enslavement of black people over the centuries is a greater moral evil even than war. Not all have agreed with me on that, but it's my view. I take seriously the opinion I've seen expressed that it it is not enough not to be racist we need to be anti racist. I can also see that for people genuinely to declare All Lives Matter can be made a distraction from Black Lives Matter and could be a way of not fully facing up to the issue of racism seriously enough. I can easily find in myself the desire to criticise the violence that has resulted from some protests as the real evil rather than stay with the central point that racism is evil. I have been genuinely taken aback by the many stories of casual, everyday racism that many people of colour seem to endure. I was myself on one occasion the victim of verbal racial abuse because my skin colour is white. What was said about my whiteness was deeply hurtful but it was a one-off and I know many people of colour have been abused that way a lot more than once.
I pour all this out because I want to take a vigorous stand with others against racism and am only too aware that I may already have written something that may mean I don't conform as I should to the current strength of feeling on this. But that is where my 'conform or else....' anxiety comes in. I don't think everything that is called racism is always racism. I think too many people are too easily offended on issues like gay pride, transgenderism and racism. I think that often with these issues no-one seems to have any sense of humour. I do think that there are questions that someone should be free to ask without being immediately shouted down. Dominic Raab had only to make some pretty mild comments about 'taking the knee' and people are deeply offended and hurt, or at least we're told they are, and his political leadership role is immediately in question. He, himself, was then having to backtrack and try to set the matter right. You've got to conform Dominic. And then there is the hysteria about statues and the view to which we must conform is, Rhodes must fall. I can't say I have any sympathy for the retention of a statue of a man deeply involved in the slave trade standing on a street in Bristol and maybe there are powerful arguments for a democratic discussion and decision about other statues, but we are in danger of any number of statues being removed by force by those who feel that some figure in history (eg Baden- Powell) has in the past expressed views that no longer conform to the right political thinking. I can feel scared for my country and indeed for my grandchildren if I think that we have got to live in a nation where unless you absolutely conform to the current thinking then you will be viciously shouted down, hounded by social media and called the most disgusting and vile names. There must be room to raise concerns, questions and sometimes suggest other viewpoints. Otherwise, we reach a position that even the statue of a man who won our freedom against a regime which would have punished by death any hint of non conformity is having to be protected in central London. Also, extremism eventually promotes a backlash which can severely damage the original worthy cause.
The Christian Believer must stand against the evil of racism kept on track by such verses as Colossians 3:11, 'Here (in the church) there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all (that matters) and is in all (Believers)'.
I also try to remember that again and again the New Testament tells us to 'Be kind' to one another. Eg. Eph. 4:32
But if I am going to stand for truth, be intelligently anti-racist and be kind then I won't always conform.