The Tories today announced plans for getting people off of long-term benefits and into work. Part of the scheme involves compulsory community for those on benefits for more than two years. Coupled with independent (i.e. private) back-to-work organisations the proposals will tackle ’serial claimants’.

I can envisage this proving popular with taxpayers who have been trained to think of benefit claimants as ’scroungers’ unless proved otherwise. As someone who as unemployed and on job-seeker’s allowance for a little short of a whole year I do have some sympathy with this approach. There is a dignity in work (and Pope John Paul II agreed). Nevertheless, I’d want to hear just as much about a parallel attempt to address the systemic issues that result in some people being on benefits for years.

Similarly, the nature of the contracts with the private ‘back - to - work’ centres will need close scrutiny. We’ve seen enough BBC costume drama to alert us to the iniquities of previous Poor Laws. If shareholders can make a profit out of those on longterm benefits I’d need a lot of convincing.

There’s enough of a critique in the Bible of idleness to make us take it realistically as a problem needing addressing. However, rich people’s exploitation of the poor might just find another avenue under these proposals. Let’s see if there’s a devil or angel in the detail.

In today’s Guardian, Mark Lawson identifies Gordon Brown’s 2008 catchphrase as ‘fiscal arithmetic’. According to Lawson it’s the PM’s equivalent of the reassuringly familiar ‘Nice to see you…’ belonging to Bruce Forsyth. What Lawson doesn’t tell us is the response that’s supposed to follow it. Those of us brought up on the ‘Generation Game’ will hear in our heads, even if we resist the urge to join in, ‘to see you, nice’.

What could possibly be our audience response to ‘fiscal arithmetic’?

Lawson is right though, the public’s felt need for reassurance can’t be neglected by a political leader. We want to feel safe, and more so when economic indicators point towards a troubling year. This is perhaps even more urgent for those who sense that they are financially over-committed and took short-term risks with their own credit history on the naïve belief that a day of fiscal reckoning never has to be faced.

It’s common enough to hear religious people blaming God when bad things happen; especially when they’ve got more than a sneaking suspicion that events are partly a result of their own foolishness. The responsibility has got to be deflected. I’m not suggesting that Gordon Brown is a God-substitute but there’s something of a similar process going on. The PM is blamed for everything but also expected to be the reassurance that ’something will come up’. Quite how that works these days, in the midst of a cynical approach to politicians in particular and an ambivalence towards experts in general, is hard to fathom.

‘Fiscal arithmetic’ is perhaps the oddest of catchphrases. Its appeal to the brutish realities of economic decision-making is perhaps not just what we need to hear, but the reassurance we long for. Like the doctor who tells us the truth from appraising our test results, Brown the Accountant of the Nation is maybe recognising the button we need, and want him, to push.

Macdonalds are getting a hard time in today’s Daily Mail for issuing £125 penalty charges to anyone lingering for too long in their car park [here].  Of course, where their customer car parks are being used as free parking bays for airport travellers then they’ve ever right to preserve their commercial interest. However, it’s the way that the parking monitoring company can purchase information from the DVLA in order to issue penalty charge notices to ‘offenders’ homes that is really troubling.

Our relationship with the state shifts when private companies are able to purchase our data given, quite appropriately, to those in authority for good government. If a private company can have access to the DVLA database rather than having to present a civil case first in court to which we could be lawfully summoned then there is no logical reason why they ought not also be able to secure a fingerprint or DNA identification if they want to issue us a ‘penalty charge’.  My issue is not with their right to protect the integrity and commerical viability of their own property - but with their direct access to government databases.

How is this a theological issue? First, our relationship with the state is theological because of its role in using authority and power. Next, commercial interest is elevated above rights to privacy - we ought not let our human dignity as those created in the image of God to be trumped by economic considerations. Furthermore, the tax collectors of Jesus’ day were despised because they were making excessive economic gain by doing revenue gathering on the behalf of the Empire. Jesus undermined popular prejudice by offering friendship to tax collectors; the private companies to whom the state has today devolved some of its duties are perhaps their contemporary equivalents.

That means that our response to such companies and their employees - as much as might detest their direct access to our data - are to be met with hospitality in God’s name. To me, that makes a drive-in big Mac and fries more theologically uncomfortable than I’d like.

Peter Hitchens draws Mail on Sunday readers to conditions in British prisons that go way beyond legitimate punishment, reaching the depths of inhumanity of prisoners to those they consider more evil than they. It’s heartening to hear a confessedly right-wing commentator adopting a measured and largely non-partisan call for reform. He’s critical of those who otherwise share his political stance but who turn a blind eye to prisoner-on-prisoner brutality. Hitchens’s article is here.

Credit where credit is due - there are very few online readers’ comments to this piece which perhaps says something in itself. Any help towards de-politicising prison reform ought to be affirmed.

The Guardian columnist Jackie Ashley is getting vilified by online commentators for her defence of a proportionate response to the New Labour funding debacle [here]. I’ve chipped-in with some support, see below, because if the ‘off with their heads’ mob get their way the possibility of a mistake is removed from our political system and replaced with an immediate ‘conviction’ of corruption. That’s short-termism that will come back to haunt us.

“Most of the posters are missing the point of Ashley’s argument which is that there should be a proportionate response to rules that are broken. It’s a well-trodden path - we have a variety of punishments when different laws are broken and, in most cases, a range of punishments for breaking a particular law.

If we deny politicians the possibility of making mistakes (even where this breaks a law) we lose much more than we gain. The result will make the temptation to hide irregularities even greater and will deter all but the bravest of souls from contributing to public life.

This doesn’t mean having one law for the elite and another for the rest of us. It means that criminal charges are brought but that the consequences (beyond that imposed by the courts) are clearly proportionate. Deliberate attempts to conceal funds or deceive are simply not the same as inadvertent mistakes. If we stop making such a distinction we might feel better in the short-term by claiming a few political scalps but the longer-term consequences will not be in our interests as a society.”  Posted as Eric61 around 10:45pm on 5th December.

I’ll be teaching an honours module again next Spring on Citizenship, from a practical theological perspective and have been working on some updates of my lecture material today. In trying to gather my thoughts about ‘the future of citizenship’ - the last lecture in the series - I was digging about in some of the New Labour initiatives and reports.

The Commission on Integration and Cohesion has recently published its final report, ‘Our Shared Future’ and its no surprise that it’s strong on finding ways of both expressing and developing community cohesion in the midst of increasing diversity. I don’t have any major problem with citizenship being instrumental as long as it doesn’t become too tightly focused around government policies. I don’t like the idea that citizenship might become only something that the government uses, and as a more socially (and perhaps politically) acceptable language for talking about substantial cultural differences.

The report opens with the Chair’s letter which begins with what appears to be the Commission’s motto: “A past built on difference, a future which is shared.”  Perhaps I’m missing something really obvious but I can’t quite get my head around this motto.  What follows seems to be an explanation: “As a commission our vision of society is one where people are committed to what we have in common rather than obsessing with those things that make us different.”

We didn’t build our past -  we built our future, then, which is now the present we’re living in.  The present we’re living in is also the product of our hopes for the future.  Whilst the sentiments of the vision are admirable I’m not sure that the full significance of the very different futures held by various faith groups is recognised. Some Christians expect a great dividing in the future, when the Day of Judgement comes. Other Christians anticipate a great ingathering and righting of injustices within the all-encompassing love of God - from no-one is excluded. The eschatological outlooks within other faiths can be similarly diverse.

I look forward to exploring this report in depth and maybe the finite horizon that features in its opening isn’t the only story it tells.  But if we only consider ways of sharing our temporal visions of the future we’ll be neglecting the even more powerful influence of religious eschatologies and how they have an effect, from the future, on the present.

No-one at this morning’s graduation ceremony at the University of St Andrews could have failed to realise that the ceremony was being held on St Andrews Day - thanks to the many reminders in the First Minister’s speech to graduates, their families and the members of the University in the Younger Hall.

Scotland has, in fact, four patron saints: Saints Andrew, Columba, Margaret and Palladius. Their personal histories shrouded, to differing extents, lends them an air of mystery.  If any story is commonly known it is likely to be Andrew’s role as a disciple of Jesus. Columba’s part in the early conversion of Scots to Christianity might be re-told in a few circles but Margaret (wife of Malcolm III Canmore of Scotland), may be remembered for her work for justice and improved conditions for the poor by only the historically literate and pupils attending schools named after her (e.g. in Aberdeen or Edinburgh) or patients and families benefiting from the hospice named after her in Clydebank. Palladius, an evangelist to the Picts in the early Fifth Century can be charitably termed ‘obscure’ [see The Patron Saints Index].

They each have their memorial days so we ought to have national holidays on not only 30th November but also on 9th June (Columba), 7th July (Palladius), and 16th November (Margaret). These saints’ days cluster a bit too much so maybe we need to find new patron saints that will disperse national holidays a bit more evenly throughout the year. On the other hand, there are perhaps more important reasons for choosing inspirational figures then securing another holiday.

Regulars to the CSRP (Centre for the Study of Religion & Politics) weekly seminar who weren’t around the campus today missed a vibrant presentation by Dr Andrea Teti (an alumnus of St Andrews and now lecturing in International Relations at the University of Aberdeen). He introduced us to one of his current works in progress: “Orientalist roots of ‘Transitology’: organising knowledge and producing moral geographies of democratisation in the Middle East”.

I won’t attempt to rehearse his argument because I wouldn’t do it justice. What I can say is that once again it’s come home to just how important inter-disciplinary conversation is if some of us are going to attempt practical theology. It doesn’t just broaden our horizons but it disciplines us to engage with the questions that colleagues are asking rather than letting theology try to set the agenda. That needn’t mean that we stick with the questions framed by our colleagues and it was envigorating today to find some common cause with Andrea in questioning the questions that cultural theorists are posing.

After hearing Andrea unpack many dimensions of the ways that the Western mindset attempts to handle (and somehow impose) its expectations of those its seeking to ‘democratise’ I’m left wondering about any parallels within my own field of practical theology.  In other words, what are the politics of ‘practical theology’ (the discipline)? I’m not thinking about the party allegiances, if any, of particular exponents but rather of the political nature inherent within current models of practical theology.  It’s not going to be as simple as zooming in on liberationist models. I sense another article coming on but I’m sure someone will have begun to write about this. I’m looking forward to digging around as I’ve no idea at the moment.  

Thinking a bit more about the debacle in Oxford the other evening I’m beginning to see it as a microcsm of contemporary society. There’s a conflict within many opinion formers between their longing for a liberal society (in which the state is neutral on morality) and their repugnance at the notion that someone might be ‘offended’. What in effect appears to happen is that ‘taking offence’ sometimes takes priority - but by-standers still want a neutral public square in which freedom (of speech) is paramount. As a consequence, and in the absence of a ‘common good’, freedom to ‘be offended’ validates individuals’ action that restricts others’ speech.

The threat is not state suppression of free speech but unilateral, individualised, even anarchic responses. The irony is that this is in an attempt to protect free speech by inhibiting it. Ian Markham argues in his Plurality and Christian Ethics that the secular anti-realist can be informed but not enhanced; can listen but not share. The secularist is forced to reduce differences to simply ‘different cultural ways of looking at the world’ – there can be no mutual respect (p.159).

I find his approach broadly persuasive, not least because he articulates a religiously-conscious polity that does not rush to foreclose debate but, on principle, holds to a religious plurality because our shared quests for higher truth are never complete and require the continual possibility of insights from others.

How would that have made the spectable in Oxford any different? At least it might have avoided some of the confusion about the supposed secular neutrality that is used to underpin freedom of speech. It might have offered some prospect of holding the tension between speech-rights and ‘the right not to be offended’. A rational theist polity could have, perhaps, made the issue of mutuality much more central.

Putting that way still spooks me. It seems to marginalise secularists - but - and it’s a big caveat - the theism is not one that is narrow, closed and anti-secularist. If it can be sufficiently open to welcome secularists - but not let them set all the rules of the game - it could be productive. This form of theism is not the one we most readily encounter so I think I’m still very hesitant. Nevertheless, Markham’s proposal is more robust than the naive secularism that appears to have played a part in the Oxford media-circus.

Last night’s event in Oxford where David Irving and Nick Griffin were amongst the speakers has generated a lot of comment on the Guardian’s website [here]. The meeting was disrupted by protestors objecting to invitations having been given to these men to speak. The relative significance and extent of the violence of the protestors is seen differently by commentators but all in all it appears to have been a bit of a media spectacle.

Much of the website discussion revolved around ‘free speech’ and how misunderstandings of it can give a prestigious (and highly publicised) platform to those with repugnant views - and in some cases, to advocate anti-free speech policies. On the whole, the protestors get a hard time for turning Irving and Griffin into ‘victims’ of anti-free speech strong-arm tactics.

What this episode tells us is that it is nigh on impossible to wholly disentangle reasoned debate, rabble-rousing, assertions rather than argumentation, a 24/7, instantaneous-media agenda, publicity-seeking and probably a few other factors.  There’s a complex, deadly serious game at play - with some players more adept than others; and in which no-one really shares a common rule-book.

The tidy categories that academics and theoriticians love simply don’t have traction on the ground. That goes for theological responses too of course. I think I want to come back to this topic and see if I get some practical theological perspective on this new combination of factors.