Longrider

The Jerusalem Trust has discovered some uncomfortable truths about modern children and their understanding of Christianity.

CHILDREN see Jesus as a “rather pallid figure” and are confused about almost every aspect of His life and mission, research has found.

The lack of understanding about the founder of Christianity includes children who believe Christians at Easter celebrate Christmas or even chocolate, and others who think that Jesus died on the Cross “to replenish our sins”.

According to the study, funded by the Jerusalem Trust, a Sainsbury family charity, Jesus has been turned into “a very nice secular humanist, a nice chap, who wanted everyone to be nice to each other”.

Although at face value this appears to reflect once more a lack of subject matter covered in schools (along with history, English language, literature, modern languages and mathematics, if some of the youngsters I’ve talked to are anything to go by), I take some comfort from this. I doubt it pleases those who commissioned the research, though.

Yet, it is so logical. I recall my early days at school when I was first introduced to the Christmas story and subsequently the Easter one. Even at five years of age my inquisitive mind was rejecting the contradictions inherent in both. The physical world around me just didn’t support what were, to me, very nice fairy tales, but that was all they were. I could perceive no more truth in them than in Cinderella or Red Riding Hood. I didn’t believe in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy either and for the same reasons; such fantastic, supernatural occurrences did not happen in real life – therefore, they did not happen. Consequently, It doesn’t surprise me that a new generation are equally unimpressed.

While most of the children knew that Jesus had a reputation as a caring person, fewer than one in ten believed that Jesus was, or is, God. A third found Him “a bit confusing” and more than a quarter thought him “hard to believe in”. The children struggled to understand Jesus’s death and Resurrection, and resorted to the language of magic to describe him, linking the miracles with the magic tricks of Paul Daniels.

And, interestingly, this:

Many of the other children were guarded about faith, describing it as “too fantastic” or saying there was “no evidence”.

While there are times when I worry about the quality of education received by successive generations who leave full time education unable to string a sentence together and unaware of important historical influences on the culture and development of their nation, its system of government and its place in the world, this is a little nugget of gold gleaming in the dross. Here, at least, is evidence of critical thinking. We should nurture it.

Chris Dillow asks the question.

Is John Reid a moron or a racist? I ask because of this:

We joined this party because we wanted to see a more equal and just society, where people are no longer held back by the accident of birth…
I’m putting fairness at the heart of everything we’re doing in the Home Office.
That’s why I favour tighter immigration controls.

Well, he could be both or neither, but being in favour of tighter immigration controls is not an indication of racism. I do wish people would stop equating immigration control with racism. Immigration control is about restricting entry to the country – race has bugger all to do with it.

I see that the case against Stephen Green has been dropped.

 Today, at Cardiff magistrates’ court, the Crown Prosecution Service said it would not proceed due to “insufficient evidence.”

Well, that was obvious to everyone but the police and CPS. This case should never have been brought as I argued when it first hit the headlines. Mr Green was simply expressing his opinion. In a liberal democracy, people do that. We might not like what they say, but we value their right to do so.

There is a moral here and one anyone faced with a similar situation should take note:

Mr Green, who last year led protests against the BBC’s broadcast of Jerry Springer: the Opera, was charged by South Wales police’s minority support unit after refusing to accept a formal caution.

If faced with similar bullying, refuse the caution and let them prove their case in court. Okay, standing up to the boys in blue takes a certain degree of nerve, but if you are right, it is worth the effort and the more that do, hopefully, the more likely they will get the message that they are wrong to be bringing these cases.

Free speech – as I have frequently argued here – must be sacrosanct, no matter what we think about the content of that speech. I abhor Mr Green’s views, but will defend absolutely his right to voice them. However, as the Devil’s Kitchen points out,  not everyone places the same value on freedom of expression. This, from the Morning-Star for instance.

This is one face of religious intolerance in the UK. Stephen Green is the national director of Christian Voice and thinks he has the right to shove his biggoted religious views in your face.

He hates anyone who has views different to his own, and hopes, if your views are different to his, that you will burn in hell.

Yeeeeesss…

he should have got a kicking for being an intolerant wanker,

Riiiiight… So it’s okay to indulge in freedom of speech providing it isn’t intolerant bigotry – or, more precisely, as long as it fits in with your intolerant bigotry. Gotcha! Hypocrisy is not in your dictionary, then ?

Anyway, for once I find myself in mild disagreement with DK as, like Tony at the Morning-Star, he believes Mr Green should not sue the police:

That’ll be great, Stephen, you fucking moron; they could be out “nicking villains” instead of appearing in court to defend their—admittedly pathetic—actions to you.

While I go along with the overall sentiment about wasting police time and effort; in this case, I think legal action is right and proper. Yes, it’s trivial, but that’s the point. Mr Green was prosecuted over trivia. The police wasted time and resource over something that they should never have become involved with. Police officers poking about in matters that don’t concern them has become a developing trend lately; the bollocks to Blair T shirts, the “shit” metal detector, the “gay” police horse are just three such; and it’s high time it stopped. Yes, damn right they should be out nicking real villains instead of wasting time defending trivial litigation. However, that litigation might just concentrate their minds – particularly if it keeps happening. So, for that reason, I hope Mr Green does sue and wins.

I’ve been following the fallout from Richard North’s comments on the role of bloggers with some mild amusement. There’s more here, here, here, here and, feck me, now I’m at it. My, what an incestuous thing this blogging stuff is. As DK points out today, it’s still grumbling on and Dr North really does seem to have a bee in the old bonnet about this political blogging lark:

Frankly, I am getting more than a little tired of the self-obsessed indulgence the media is currently displaying with the Tony and Gordon show in Manchester at the Labour Party conference. But that irritation also extends to the British political bloggers who seem quite content to follow in the wake of the MSM and prattle endlessly about exactly the same issues.

Often the humour and analysis is about the level one would expect of the 4th form of a second-rate boys boarding school and I have heard more intelligent comment from college students in fifth and sixth forms in the lectures I have been given to schools recently.

And…

As bloggers, you can indulge in your idle tittering and puerile humour or you can act as grown ups. The choice is yours and your readers will be your judges.

Sigh. I guess my initial reaction was a massive “so what?” Some blogs are, indeed, puerile. So what? Others are more considered and heavyweight. Again, so what? Readers will gravitate to those blogs they like; either because they agree with the writer or because they find the writer informed, interesting and informative – maybe they just like the writing. Again, so what? Some blogs are simply the idle ramblings of an on-line diary. So what? Who cares? Dr North does, it seems.

That does, as I say, leave the bloggers. You – collectively – can continue to play your little games. Or you can show up the media and the politicians and make the running. Which is it to be?

I’m sorry, but I must have been asleep when the political blogger’s book of rules and guidelines was issued. Could someone forward me a copy, please?

Dr North on the one hand slings accusations of puerile behaviour at bloggers, then indulges himself:

Amusingly, the anal retentives are already fisking this post,

Yeeeeeessss… If finding his comments a bit silly and feeling under no obligation to agree with him makes me an anal retentive, I guess I’ll just have to learn to live with it. I’ve got broad shoulders; I’m sure I’ll cope.

What Dr North seems to be missing, despite several others pointing it out – and it being blindingly obvious – is that there are no rules (beyond the usual regarding defamation and libel) and there are no responsibilities. This blog is primarily focused on politics, however I feel under no obligation to live up to anyone else’s expectations or “make the running” and I neither need nor desire the backslapping we are accused of:

What they seem to miss is the acres of self-congratulatory postings, where the groupescules so love preening about how clever they are, and how they are the future - taking over from the poor, tired MSM. But, if push comes to shove, many simply end up being a pale imitation of the thing they so love to despise.

Really? Nothing like a sweeping generalisation to make oneself look a bit silly.

I don’t write this blog for Dr North or anyone else. I write it because; as DK points out; I want to. I write because it gives me a focus and an opportunity to hone my craft as a wordsmith. If others want to read and engage; all well and good. If they don’t, well, that’s their choice. If that means I fall short of Dr North’s expectations of me as a political blogger… well, too bad, he’ll just have to get used to the idea. Not that I’ll be losing any sleep over it.

The Devils Kitchen picked up a theme from my NO2ID comment the other day. In it he despairs of those who “don’t do politics”.

The constant assault on my faith in the principle of libertarianism is the stupity and ignorance of the majority of the people amongst whom we are forced to live. This is why anyone who says, “I don’t do politics” earns my unalloyed contempt and opprobrium.

Yes, I know. Isolated in my own little world; divorced from the rest of society (one of the disbenefits of self employment) I rarely discuss politics with others. On the few occasions that I do, I am starkly reminded that so many understand so little of what is going on. Oh, sure, they see the headlines, so know that Israel is “evil”, or that country folk are all “sadists” (actually, I don’t like hunting with hounds, but confine my disapproval to not taking part) and that “guns make people into killers” but never look behind the banal headlines at the real story beneath and never stop to challenge the assumptions placed before them for easy consumption. These people simply soak up the dumbed down diet of trivia fed to them by Aunty Beeb and believe, for example, that a child really can buy a car on eBay – and don’t even start to ask themselves the obvious questions.

That’s the rub, though, isn’t it? People don’t ask questions, they don’t challenge what is presented to them. Propaganda is something that happened in the USSR and its satellites, propaganda is something Goebbels did – the good old Beeb doesn’t seek to influence us like that, does it?

So, force fed a diet of pap; obese with trivia and anorexic of inquisitorial mind, they are aware of the spat between Tony Blair and his chancellor, but not the undercurrent of illiberal laws. Such laws are passed unnoticed – and “it could never happen here” remains stuck fast in the concrete of the public mindset. Ninety days detention for suspects is okay; after all, it won’t be them deprived of freedom; “it could never happen here”. On the spot fines are okay – after all, it’s only hooligans and hoodies that will be affected, so “I’m alright Jack” prevails. And prevail it does until some nice middle class white person falls foul of one of the new laws and then it’s “political correctness gone mad”. I’m sorry, ducks, it was consigned to the asylum years back.

I realise, to my ongoing chagrin, that the British public really doesn’t “do” politics. They vote for the nicest looking leader come election time, and that’s it; duty done; back to the soaps and the silly news stories.

All of which reminds me of that Plato quote Mat has put up on voting taktix

“The penalty that good men pay for not being interested in politics is to be governed by men worse than themselves.”

Well, if it hasn’t already happened, then God help us. No one else will.

Oh, I don’t believe in him. That’s me stuffed, then.

Update: The Remittance Man, commenting over at DK’s makes an interesting point:

How many English people under 40 could tell you about the significance of Magna Carta? The Peasants’ Revolt? The Glorious Revolution? The Civil War? de Montfort’s rebellion? Or any of the other momentous events in English history that secured our rights and privileges? Maybe one in a thousand. If we’re lucky.

Thanks to the left’s assault on history teaching the vast bulk of the population are simply unaware of the things that shaped our nation and gave us what we have today. And in that condition they are simply unable to put up any sort of fight against any illiberal measure proposed by the state.

Quite.

It’s nice to see NO2ID getting their message out in the mainstream rags. For those who are familiar with the arguments, the bar-code moustache is a fitting and humourous way to make a point. However, I’m just a little concerned that it may backfire in the minds of the majority. Take, for instance, this comment from someone on a message forum when the issue was raised:

 “To be honest I’m a bit ignorant to all this I have seen it mentioned but didn’t really look into it
For what purpose does Tony Blair want to bring in the Identity cards?”

That comment, in a nutshell, is the public perception of identity cards. We, the aware; the refusniks; have been discussing it ad nauseum for the past five years, but for the general public it’s been little more than a tiny radar blip on the evening news. For us, it’s anxiously watching the outcome of a crucial vote; for them, it’s what’s happening on East Enders or Corrie. They don’t know and they don’t care. They are blissfully unaware of those freedoms they have already lost, because they didn’t exercise them in the first place. Only those sufficiently motivated will be inclined to want to protest outside parliament – if you aren’t you won’t be aware of the restrictions. Mention the Civil Contingencies act or the Legislative and Regulatory Reform bill and expect a “Duh?” in response.

These people will sincerely believe that identity cards will do something about terrorism, or illegal immigration – all because they haven’t expended any energy thinking it through. So, all power to NO2ID for raising awareness. I’m just not convinced that the imagery is the right one to use. For those who are not aware of the curtailment of liberty that has already happened and lack the imagination or historical knowledge to realise the implications, this will smack of scaremongering, with the resultant dismissal of the message as mere histrionics from a small, insignificant pressure group. Tell ’em how much it’s going to hit them in the wallet, and I guarantee that you’ll have their undivided attention. That, I’m afraid, is the sum of it.

Sir Ivor Roberts is the retiring ambassador to Italy. It is a tradition that outgoing ambassadors get to make a valedictory dispatch. A chance to say what he really thinks without being too diplomatic about his lords and masters. Sir Ivor, in that fine tradition, has done just that:

In his letter, Roberts painted a picture of a diplomatic service confused about its function and wasteful with taxpayers’ money. “If we spent more on conflict resolution, that is on classical diplomacy, we would spend less on reconstruction and peacekeeping,” he said, in a reference to Lebanon.

But he was also scathing about bureaucratic waste, claiming that the diplomatic service was “terrorised by management analysis forms”. He added: “I’ve been told that the Department for International Development [headed by Hilary Benn] has spent as much on management consultants as the Foreign Office has on its entire budget. We have overindulged in management consultancy.”

Given the source; a man used to couching words diplomatically, this is scathing stuff. And how was this taken by HMG?

But Roberts’s polemic, written this month, so angered the government that within hours Sir Peter Ricketts, the permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, withdrew the right of retiring ambassadors to pen a swansong…

…This weekend the Foreign Office confirmed that valedictory dispatches had been discontinued.

All too predictable. :dry:

This week’s Britblog is up.