Saturday 9 July 2016

'Christian Voice' is nothing of the sort

There's a group, well it might be just one person but let's assume there a few of them, called Christian Voice. It's led by Stephen Green. He got an undeserved level of exposure by forming Christian Voice and sending out lots of press releases. Eventually he was picked up by the media and the BBC, in one of the many immature attempts at balance, put him on panels opposite atheists. A fundamentalist Christian balances out a fundamentalist atheist as only two crazy people shouting from opposite ends of a see-saw can.

I have a problem with Christian Voice. I don't consider very much of what they say to be authentically Christian. It's all pretty angry... and it's easier to say what they're against, than what they're for. Christian Voice is very certain about a lot of things. There are lots of Bible verses peppering their communications, few of which mean anything out of the original context.

"Who will rise up for me against the evil doers, or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?" 

The above verse from Psalm 94 is used on the About Us page on their website. The answer, it seems, is Stephen Green and anyone like minded who wants to get involved. It's taken woefully out of context though, as is all scripture used by Christian Voice.

So let's strip back the christianese nonesense, the King James Bible verses, and the holy justification for being unpleasant... what do we have here?

They're politically towards the right wing end of the Conservative party and support causes that are thus aligned. They dislike gay people, anyone of a different faith, multi-culturalism, Europe. 

They like the church having a privileged position in society and see any attempt to give those with a different view point some sort of equal weighting in our society as an attack on their faith and evidence of the sinfulness of the nation.

If this group were called 'Conservative Voice' or 'Wasn't everything better in the past Voice' then I wouldn't have a problem with them. There's nothing unusual in the views espoused by this group, unfortunately.

Here's the bottom line. If you can't be 'Christian' without being unpleasant... If you're known by what you're against rather than who you're for... If you stand where some people want to build a really impressive Mosque and call on the Lord to put a stop to it all, rather than offer to help them and be their friend... Well, there's the oft quoted, somewhat trite staying "what would Jesus do?" and I wonder... what? Because I don't think it's what this group do while claiming his name.