Self Hating White Anglicans II

Neat post by George Miller.

Susurration, a blog that's been around a while (but I've only just found), has the follow-up to the Bishop Stephen Lowe story - the inevitable Guardian letter.

However good its tune, the real problem about I Vow to Thee My Country, like all aggressive and male-oriented hymnody, is that, in an age which has effectively relegated the second verses heavenly ways of gentleness and peaceful paths to a fairly painless insurance policy, an emasculated dreamlike world is wheeled out to sanctify whatever current war effort. Why not keep the tunes, but with some revamped non-patriotic, non-violent lyrics?

David Partridge

Oxford

Male-oriented - well, you can't get much more aggressive and fascistic than that, can you ? He must feel awful trapped in his gender.

David Partridge is a retired Anglican priest who works for the Oxford-based International Interfaith Centre, which "facilitates networking, encounter, education and research between religious and spiritual individuals, organisations, and communities throughout the world". He works on the "Palestine/Israel programme, Religion, Community and Conflict, in co-operation with Hope Flowers School, Bethlehem". At least the Hope Flowers School looks like a cause we could - and should - all support.

He also runs Clergy Against Nuclear Arms and in his spare time takes part in what Independent Catholic News calls "nonviolent civil disobedience" and what you or I might call politically motivated vandalism.

Stephen Lowe and David Partridge worry about patriotic, 'male-oriented' hymns and nuclear weapons. If only they could focus on male-oriented evil a little closer to their front doorsteps. In the newsletter of this Oxford Unitarian Church, after notification that David Partridge will preach about Peace on 26 January, there is a portrait of a chapel member.

Suzanne was the first pupil from her State school in Watford to win a place at Oxford University. She began reading for a degree in physics at St Hilda's College six years ago, attending Sunday services in Manchester College chapel, but spending most of her spare time doing unpaid work for 'Oxygen', Oxford's student radio station ... At the start of her second year at Oxford, in November 1997, Suzanne was attacked without provocation by a gang of youths late one night in Cowley Road. The head injuries that she received impaired her memory and concentration, and made reading difficult for her. She had to withdraw from her physics course and has only recently - after four years of recuperation - resumed her studies. During her long struggle to reclaim her life, she lost most of her school and college friends, became homeless, and suffered depression.

The perpetrators were doubtless "some of the most abused and brutalised people in our society" (© Johann Hari 2004).

Which brings this rambling post to the current issue of New Criterion magazine, devoted to religion. I recommend Christie Davies piece "The death of religion & the fall of respectable Britain".


Finally - you couldn't make it up - Labour MP Martin Linton appears on BBC Radio Four's Today to discuss a proposed new set of lyrics for 'I Vow To Thee My Country' by English patriot Billy Bragg, a man who believes his political opponents should be beaten up in the street.