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My own tradition of Christian discipleship arises out of a history of persecution, intolerance and resistance to those powers, political and religious, that want to tell me what to think, what to say, how to live. At the heart of Baptist history and thought is a passionate witness to the right of each person to have freedom of conscience before God in the expression of their faith. Witness, in its semantic derivations, points us back to those for whom willing martyrdom for the sake of religious freedom was preferable to religious compulsion enforced by political oppression. So I try to live my life within that same passionate commitment to liberty of conscience before God with its inevitable corollary of religious toleration. And in turn, I stand in a tradition preferring the use of reason, persuasion and the witness of an alternative way of living as the preferred approach to changing the views of the other. In other words, witness, testimony, lived practices of faith, trust in truth as both ultimately self-verifying and as primary ethical stance, define the moral and political modus operandi of those committed to the classic nonconformist Baptist dissenting tradition.

So when there is a public furore about freedom of speech, political validity, liberty of conscience, I am interested, I have an opinion, I have a way of life to which I want to bear witness, my freedom of conscience conviction starts to sound shrill warnings like a manic car alarm. Should the BNP leader be allowed to appear on the BBC flagship political talk forum Question Time? The position of the BBC is that as a legal party with elected MEP's, the BNP is entitled to an invitation to take part, otherwise the BBC would be accused of political discrimination. And for the BBC to refuse to invite the BNP would give rise to accusations of bias, the BBC being in the pocket of the establishment, the independence of the BBC being compromised. And then of course the claim that the BNP would be made martyrs, would be given legitimacy for their claim that Britain no longer belongs to the British because the BNP which represents those disaffected with a multi-cultural Britain is simply being silenced; and if their views are so heinous, why not let them be heard and so be self-condemned before a mature thoughtful public. And so on. And so on. The claim is made that the BBC must be impartial; cannot be partial; must provide the same platform for the BNP as any other political party. 

Now I know I'm standing on thin ice. Liberty of conscience must also extend even to those whose conscience recognises very different values to my own, even the leader of the BNP and its supporters. But I am not questioning his right to hold repugnant political opinions rooted in dehumanising convictions about human beings whose colour, faith, cultutral identity is different. Nor am I advocating the muzzling of voices that spew the toxic waste of racial hate and violence – by all means let's have the argument. And I recognise that in a democracy people vote for the candidate who most represents their interests, opinions, political apsirations, and therefore the election of the BNP to public office is its own moral critique of our culture.

But the question of whether or not Nick Griffin should be invited by the BBC to sit alongside mainstream politicians and other social commentators is not about democracy – but about the legitimation of that which has no moral legitimacy. And the invitation to the BNP isn't about free speech either. The BBC's concern not to silence the BNP, need not have meant providing them with a platform of perceived acceptance by a major public institution with unique status across the world – a publicly funded Corporation.

(I should say I am deliberately posting this before the programme is aired this evening, and so without the benefit of hindsight.)

No. As one trying to interpret what religious toleration means today, and as one doing his best to live faithfully and responsibly (only God knows with what mistakes and miss-judgements) in upholding freedom of conscience before God, I can see no moral justification for the appearance of Nick Griffin on Question Time. And yes. I know that the moral argument is described as slippery and oppressive – whose morals, who is the adjudicator, who has the right to pull the plug, and what about the rights of BNP members? Well actually lets not talk only of rights. How about obligations? If the BBC feels obliged to have the BNP on the show, and does so by claiming the high ground of impartiality, and the claim it is merely reflecting the realities of a society that elected these men in the first place – then here's my question. What is the BBC's obligation to those who are the targets of BNP villification, intimidation and political rage?  Do they have rights that the BBC recognises as playing a significant part in their editorial decisions? What does moral responsibility mean if it doesn't have some purchase on precisely those editorial decisions that impact on the safety, dignity and right to exist in peace of large sections of our popuplation of British citizens?

This isn't the first time on this blog I've taken issue with the BBC. The same claim to the absolute value of impartiality was made by the BBC in January. Then the Corporation refused to broadcast an appeal to relieve the suffering and misery of the civilians of Gaza, the appeal made by DEC the internationally recognised emergency disaster charity. (See the post on January 26 on this blog)

Are democracy and freedom of speech absolute values with no restrictions? No – they are fenced around by laws such as incitement to racial hatred. Right. But we all know that attitudes and underlying convictions that drive political goals are capable of being moderated in the public forum to allay moral censure and perhaps avoid legal action. The BNP is learning the lesson well, that the way to win power as an extremist group is to temper the worst excesses as a deliberate strategy of disarming opposition. At which point we are back to the issue of moral values, cultural fabric, humanising and humane politics. Are democracy and freedom of speech and editorial impartiality absolute values to be upheld at any price? Or are they the conveniently camouflaged idols of a culture so sold on free expression that it no longer has the moral vision to see and name evil for what it is, the courage to say no, and the ethical literacy to say why no must be said?

"The intellectual and aesthetic choices we make when we write are also moral, spiritual choices,

that can hold open a door for another to enter, or pull the door shut;

that can sharpen our thinking or allow it to recline on a comfortable bed of jargon;

that can form us in generosity and humility or in condescension and disdain."

Stephanie Paulsell, 'Writing as a Spritual Discipline'.

"What can make us to rejoice more in God than to see in him, that in us, of all his greatest works, God has joy?"

Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, ch. 68

"A poetry of anguish,

a poetry of anger, of rage,

a poetry that, from literal or deeply imagined experience,

depicts and denounces perennial injustice and cruelty in their current forms,

and in our peculiar time warns of the unprecedented perils that confront us,

can be truly a high poetry,

as well wrought as any other."

Denise Levertov, New and Selected Essays, pages 143-4

"God is our last hope

because we are God's first love."

Jurgen Moltmann, The Source of Life, page 40

Decided I'm getting too verbose, overly loquacious, verbally profligate, semantically extravagant, expostulating far beyond the exuberance of my usual verbosity (as my Gran used to say – she did, you know!).

Too many long posts, methinks.

So for the next week I'm only going to do ONE sentence posts.

Is there enough in one sentence to kick-start the mind?

We'll see.

Here are the rules:

• After today, and for the next week, only one sentence with no comment before or after.
• An image included to complement the words.
• Each sentence must come from a different author.

As a practice run:

"I have loved to hear my Lord spoken of, and wherever I have seen the print of his shoe in the earth, there I have coveted to set my foot" 

(John Bunyan, 17th Century)

Theological education is not theologically neutral. A confessional College working within the framework of a secular University can either opt for a stance of critical distance and attempted intellectual objectivity, or it can self-consciously position itself within its own confessional tradition, while encouraging that tradition itself to be open to critique and review. Of course critical distance and attempted objectivity can never be neutral anyway; and there is something to be said for stating at the outset the position adopted by teachers, the assumptions and presuppositions that underlie any given course.

That's why our Scottish Baptist College is deliberately and intentionally open about our commitment to a Baptist way of doing theology, while also being open to that mutual enhancement of educational practice made possible by collaborative partnership with a publicly funded University. Theological education is no different from other subject-focused forms of learning. We pursue our peculiar agendas, exploring our particular subject field, develop distinctive discourse, and seek enriched understanding through that cross fertilisation of ideas we call multi-disciplinary study. But all this is done as a theological College which is self-consciously Baptist and Scottish.

It's against that kind of background that Wallace Alston Jr. makes a passionate plea for convictional teaching, a real and acknowledged  relationship between a teacher's personal beliefs and their public instruction. Theological education as a process of Christian formation is at its most formatively effective when teachers are vocational mentors who demonstrate an attractive and persuasive discipleship of the intellect.

"What I am talking about is classroom teaching that leaves no doubt in the student's mind concerning where the teacher stands in relation to the subject under consideration, whether it is of life and death importance or simply an object of dispassionate reflection and evaluation. Convictional teaching is teaching done from the inside of an issue or idea as a sympathetic participant  rather than from the outside  as a disinterested spectator. It is teaching with such obvious passion for the subject matter that the student is caught up, drawn into it, and brought to the point pf personal decision about its meaning and merit. Convictional teaching in theological education  is a form of intellectual mentoring whereby the teacher approaches  questions of truth in scripture and tradition with a hermeneutics of trust and gratitude that bears witness to the sheer delight of serving God with the life of the mind."

Wallace Aston, 'The Education of a Pastor-Theologian', The Power to Comprehend with All the Saints. The Formation and Practice of a Pastor-Theologian, Wallace M Alston & Cynthia A Jarvis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 71-2.

The painting is called 'Shadow in the Middle' and is by Daniel Bonnell. The play of light and shadow, the protective stance of Jesus, the tooth shaped shadows around Jesus and the woman, the stones lying on the ground – whatever else, Jesus is no dispassionate observer. A crash course in theological education might start with an exegesis of this painting, some convictional teaching on holiness as moral courage on behalf of others. And the competence based learning outcome might be "a demonstrated capacity to stand in the middle beside the vulnerable, daring the stone throwers"!