When was the last time someone questioned you about your faith? Whereas once the question would have been ‘are you a Christian,’ the phraseology is now more often along the lines of ‘would you call yourself a Christian.’

The first is an objective statement of being, an absolute. The second a subjective assessment – you might not call me that, but that’s what I call myself. Perhaps the move from objective to subjective ontology is part of a wider cultural shift…

The question of disclosing my faith been a problematic one for me, not through any shame about my beliefs, more through issues about the culture that has grown up around it, and the way that it is popularly perceived. To declare myself ‘Christian’ is to enter an ecosystem of misunderstanding and judgements about what I believe. It is, too often, to be labelled homophobic, unscientific, intellectually closed.

Ironically, rather than answer the question, or offer to denominate ourselves, we should do as Jesus did and turn the question round. Who do you say that I am? was Jesus’ piercing question to Peter, and perhaps this offers something important. Jesus did not self-identify, and may be we should follow this lead.

Perhaps Christians should be non-self-identifying. If you want to call me ‘Christian’ then go ahead. But perhaps it’s best if I don’t identify myself as that. Aim to be known for my actions, not hiding behind my labels. What I think this does is turn the tables on our ethics. Our actions are not based on ‘I call myself a Christian, so I should do x,’ but more on ‘she does x, that’s a Christ-like thing to do.’

I’ve been following the discussions that have been going on in the Church of England recently over the issue of whether women should be able to be bishops. It appears that the answer is going to be ‘no’. Or, at least, ‘not yet.’

What I’ve not quite been able to tease out is precisely why. I’ve read through the C of E’s 2004 paper on the issue – available here as a PDF – and, though it sets out three lines of argument: Scripture, tradition and reason (see page 232), it concludes that each of these can be used either to support or refute the issue.

Today I listened to a Philosophy Bites podcast on John Rawls’ theory of justice. In it, Jonathan Wolff outlines a thought experiment of Rawls’. Imagine two people are discussing what the fairest taxation system was. One might imagine that a richer person would argue for a lower tax burden, and a poorer person for a higher one. Rawls suggests that the fairest taxation system would come out of an argument between these people if they had no idea of their own wealth position. What type of taxation system would you like if you did not know if you were rich or poor? Extending this principle more widely, as Rawls puts it: people disagree about justice because they are biased by their own interests. The discussion in the podcast then brings up another example: what would your attitudes to racial discrimination be if you had no idea what race you were? It is the blind who perhaps have the best view on race.

Listening to this made think about the women bishops issue. Imagine being able to meet a person, talk to them, see them lead and minister, pray and preach – all without knowing what gender they were. Given that women can do all of these things at least to an equal degree as male bishops, and that we could theoretically follow a competent person around who could do the job of bishop in a godly way without knowing their gender, the question then becomes: what is the fundamental thing about being a woman that means they cannot take on the role? The CofE has already concluded that the arguments from Scripture, tradition and reason can be used both ways, so I feel that it is really for those who would want to deny women the right to be appointed to explain what it is about them that bars them.

Is it simply chromosomes? Being a woman, or a man, is part of our ontology. As a man I can act like a woman – I can change my behaviours to be more womanly, but I cannot become one. Or can I? Issues of gender are not quite as straightforward as we might think – as the case of the South African runner Caster Semenya, who has undergone a gender test to try to work out if she really is female. But even if we leave these gender spectrum issues aside, I want to know what it is in a woman’s woman-ness that bars her from being a bishop. It’s simply not good enough to say ‘the bibles tells us.’ Why? Well put a hat on and we’ll go stone some people and discuss it.

What I want to hear from those who think women cannot take on the role is a precise reason why. And I’ve yet to hear one that deals with the ontological question. For me, that boils it down to plain sexism.

Interesting piece on the Today programme this morning, re-visiting the constituency of Smethwick – a safe seat in which was notoriously won by the vile Conservative candidate Peter Griffiths in 1964 following his campaign which ran under the slogan ‘If You Want A Nigger For  A Neighbour, Vote Labour.” Smethwick reacted to chuck out the safe-sitting Labour candidate over their fears about people of other ethnicities – who ‘didn’t live like us whites,’ though Griffiths was told to be expect to serve his time in Westminster as a ‘political leper,’ – something that enraged Labour MPs to sign a motion that this was “a cruel and unmerited slight on lepers.”

On this St George’s day John Humphrys explored what was going on in Smethwick now, over 45 years after that campaign, and found a hugely diverse community… that still had huge worries about immigration. A Sikh – who’s grandparents had moved to Smethwick many years ago – was particularly interesting. He was quite clear: he didn’t want ‘the floodgates to open’ and for loads more immigrants to come in. Why? Not because of the colour of their skin, but because they would take jobs away from British people like him. “Thank goodness,” Humphrys concluded, “we can talk about the issue of immigration without being accused of racism.”

I agree wholeheartedly – it’s wonderful that the foul days of racist language in mainstream politics are over (though they remain very close to the edges). But I was uneasy about the conclusion drawn here, especially with it being St George’s day and thus a celebration of all things good in this fair and pleasant land. My concern is this: once we have accepted that there is just one human race – that colour and creed are no matter and that we are all created equal – then why the tacit acceptance of the economic inequality that still rages? If people are coming to this country because they want a better lifestyle, they want their children to have a good education and better prospects in future, why should we close our doors to them? To me it still smacks of the injustice of Empire: we pillage other lands to make ourselves hugely rich, but then deny those who made us rich the opportunity to share in that wealth. It’s a sort of economic racism: it’s become unacceptable to judge people on the colour of their skin, but remains acceptable to judge them on their economic means. Let’s be clear: rich immigrants have no problems coming here.

I’m not suggesting that there should be no controls on movements of people. I am suggesting that we need to work far harder to improve the lot of people around the world so that inequality is minimised. As we celebrate St George’s day, let’s not forget that this Palestinian Roman soldier turned Christian martyr who stood up for his minority beliefs against the ruling elite is also the patron saint of Catalonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, Lithuania, Palestine, Portugal and Russia. So perhaps our thoughts ought not to be of white people or warm beer or cricket. But of fairness, of standing up for the oppressed, of celebrating with Russians, Ethiopians, Greeks, Palestinians and others and committing ourselves to overcoming all prejudice, whether that be to do with race or economic means.

Interesting storm blown up over the Press Complaints Commission’s censure of a piece written by right-wing blogger Rod Liddle in The Spectator recently.

In it he wrote that “overwhelming majority” of London’s violent crime was carried out by young, African-Caribbean men. In his evidence to the PCC he provided statistics that confirmed that certainly a large majority of certain sorts of crimes was carried out by young black men, but was eventually censured over his use of the word ‘overwhelming.’

Liddle isn’t backward in coming forward in his views on race, and has regularly been critical of black culture in the UK. Do I think he is racist? Probably, yes. But I also think that as a society as a whole we have been frightened of any highlighting of problems within black culture in the UK for fear of being branded racists – something I touched on in a previous post about the BNP.

The interesting thing about the PCC’s action is that it is the first time that a blogger has been censured in this way. Liddle’s defense was that a blog post written for The Spectator is different to an article printed in its pages. Why? Because a blog is like a conversation, which is expected to get debate going and in which the writer can engage in exchange about the issues and both sides can see the arguments develop. As Liddle put it: “a blog is different because it has to be a conversation, otherwise there’s no point in having a blog.”

The head of the PCC saw it differently, saying that ruling was significant because it demonstrated that “the PCC expects the same standards in newspaper and magazine blogs that it would expect in comment pieces that appear in print editions” and that “the magazine could not rely on publishing critical reaction as a way of abrogating its responsibilities under the code.”

So is a blog a conversation? It has the ability to be such, as long as comments are possible – which increasingly is not the case on the blogs of many people I know. And should a blog be judged by the same standards as other areas of the press, or should it be judged by laws that would adjudicate whether or not private conversations had been racist or over-inflammatory?

It seems that we have still not reached solid ground in the radical rearrangement of our social and media space that the digital revolution has precipitated. Politicians will likely call for a ‘robust debate’ on the issue – but where do these robust debates occur? It seems increasingly that blogs are like a crowded room with everyone shouting but nobody listening. There’s no learning there.

Liddle’s piece was him shouting a little louder for a moment, and this was not helpful. The real questions about why young black men are perpetrating more street-crime than those from other ethnic backgrounds is complex and needs a more profoundly empathetic – but genuine and unfearful – conversation than that which Liddle claims he tried to begin.

Occasionally two things from the news catch your ear and resonate together. Today it was the news that Obama has cancelled Nasa’s new moon programme. And [ht Barry Taylor] that Gil Scott-Heron is back with a new album.

The connection? I’ve always loved Scott-Heron’s early, hard-hitting social commentaries. And the lyrics of ‘Whitey on the Moon’ just seem so appropriate in these tough economic times – especially post Haiti’s earthquake – that I wondered if Obama had been listening when he made his decision:

I can’t pay no doctor bills
But Whitey’s on the moon
Ten years from now I’ll be paying still
While whitey’s on the moon

You know, the man just upped my rent last night
Cause whitey’s on the moon
No hot water, no toilets, no lights
But whitey’s on the moon…

The racial context of 1974 America, into which the album The Revolution Will Not Be Televised was clearly different to that of 2010. But ‘whitey’ still exists in other guises: the greedy bankers, the tight landlords, the traffickers and corrupt politicians – all of those who would divert money away from just causes to fulfil their own agendas.

Actually, I think the original Apollo missions turned out to be good value, but I can’t see that these would be. So it’s a good decision by Obama. Let’s just hope the money that is saved goes into welfare programmes, not weapons.

Despite Nick Griffin making an ass of himself on television last week, fascist and extremist parties never talk complete nonsense. There is always a dangerous fraction of truth within their rhetoric – a miniscule grain upon which they then build racist and mindless policies.

Unless serious politicians are willing to admit these small fractions of truth, parties like the BNP will always be able to flourish. It is pointless shouting them down and berating them for being totally false. The grain of truth that the mainstream parties need to admit is this: mass immigration has been tough on people, especially those at the bottom of society.

Managing change is one of politics’ main tasks, but I think that the political class have been too simplistic in saying ‘immigration and multiculturalism are good things’ and not working hard enough to a) show why this is the case and b) give people time and space to express their feelings about it. Shouting people down as racist for having reservations about huge cultural changes has only led people into the arms of the BNP.

The last 50 years have seen greater and faster changes in British society than perhaps at any other time in recent history. While the direction of this change is totally right, the speed of it can have a rupturing effect on those who do not well understand it, and perceive it as imposed on them from outside; they thus do not ‘own’ it.

So I’d like the mainline political parties to be more honest with us. Change is difficult. Multiculturalism is a high ideal towards which we should strive, but it needs managing more carefully, especially in relation to those whose communities are going to change most quickly. Cut the crap about ‘let’s have an honest debate’ and actually start having some honest debate. Debate that owns up to the small fractions of truth that the BNP feed off; debate that apologises for having taken the people of this country for granted.