2012/12/09

Review: A Better Atonement


A Better Atonement Beyond the Depraved Doctrine of Original Sin     
Tony Jones

When, half a lifetime ago, I started as a student, some of my peers were studying theology, and I was wide-eyed at the concept that they had a whole prelims paper on the Atonement [that link tells me that this is no longer the case...interesting].  I couldn't quite believe that there was enough to say, or, indeed, enough dispute to get a good argument from.  How naive I was!

I've always found the academic end of theology rather challenging - perhaps because I am not trained in the humanities or even the social sciences.  This book isn't high-blown academic theology (well, I don't think it is; how could you tell?), but it's not an easy popular read, either.  That's not to say that it's hard to read: indeed, Jones puts his easy, accessible writing to good effect here as elsewhere.  It's just that the whole theological venture seems, well, arbitrary.  The book is well-written, though it would have benefited from the attentions of an editor (a peril of self-publishing, I guess).

Many of the ideas previously appeared on Tony Jones' blog, so you can find some of it there.  I enjoy Tony's blog, so buying a 'book' with a collection of articles from there didn't seem like a bad idea.  [Aside.  It's ironic that the spell-check on this web-based blog client I'm using doesn't recognise 'blog' as a word, suggesting instead glob, bog, log, slob,...]

In the first part of the book, Jones explores the doctrine of original sin, rejecting it (in the sense that sin is somehow transmitted by semen) in place of an observation that we each sin for ourselves.

In other words, we don’t only lose our immortality because of Adam’s sin, but each of us stands guilty before God because of his sin.
I see the distinction, and yet it seems a bit like splitting hairs.  In the understanding I have received, the stress is much more on the "all have sinned" part; saying with the Psalmist "surely I was sinful from birth" rather than seeing this as particularly strongly tied to an inherited sinful state.  Perhaps I just blanked the semen bit.

But Jones sees the distinction as crucial to going on to understand the Atonement.  As an interlude, he explores his belief that Jesus really rose from being really dead.  He finds Jesus' miracles and his resurrection crucial to how these things are to be understood.

The second part explores various ways in which people have understood the Atonement.  The central idea for Evangelicals (and some others too) is Penal Substitutionary Atonement.  Jones shows a host of reasons for thinking that holding this a central pre-eminent doctrine is a mistake.  I'd have to agree there.  I've tried to avoid it in preaching and in leading worship, these last several years.  It's downright difficult - our patterns of thought, and our hymnology are suffused with it.  And yet it's unsatisfactory - particularly as a central idea, even if it makes for a good analogy and an angle to explore from time to time.

Having batted aside this and several other ideas - whilst seeing a measure of merit in most - he ends with a more constructive idea, trying to live up to the title of the book.  In this he draws upon Moltmann, but manages to confuse me so that I really cannot summarise or paraphrase what he is saying.  This paragraph seems valuable:

Our call is to identify with Christ’s suffering and death, much as he has identified with us. In his death, we are united with his suffering. And in identifying with his resurrection, we are raised to new life.
Evidently, I need to learn more about theological methodology.  Or perhaps there is no spoon.







2012/11/24

forked tongue

Protopresbyter is a new one on me.



But he does have a point. Does it make sense to pray for guidance and wisdom for all in Synod, and then repudiate the result? Just another reason why we need a new theology of prayer.

2012/11/21

saying what we want to be true

Aside from great sadness for all my Anglican friends who have prayed for - or feared - the consecration of women as bishops in the Church of England, and are now consigned to continue their prayers - or fears - for more years to come, I'm a little surprised by the tone of the debate.

The news reporting (especially, but not, I think solely, in the main news media) seems to have focussed primarily on the equality issues, and then on words from St Paul about women staying silent in church and not holding authority.  Not one that I have seen has talked of Apostolic Succession: maybe they were all being briefed by very reformed Evangelicals.  It's not my churchmanship, but the arguments are surely diminished without that piece - certainly the eventual sticking point about the nature of the arrangements for conscientious objectors.

But many of the arguments against simply seem disingenuous.  There has been a constant refrain that this is not about equality - and certainly not about employment equality.  Bishops, we are reminded, are servants of the church: leaders, yes, but by no means part of a power hierarchy.  This is a convenient story.  It may have a good spiritual pedigree.  We may wish it to be true.  But it is manifestly not true. The very characteristics which are said have marked Justin Welby as a good candidate for Archbishop are strikingly similar to those required of those aspiring to high office in a variety of other professions - albeit with a degree of winsomeness too often lacking in many corporate boardrooms.

Although the Church maintains a fiction that it does not employ its Priests (they are employed, apparently, by God, and he is not amenable to being summoned to appear before employment tribunals), to all intents and purposes that is exactly what it does.  And it most plainly runs something that looks exactly like a career structure, with a variety of promotions to more senior posts for those who demonstrate relevant expertise (or gifts).  Pretending otherwise really does no one any favours.

Viewed in that light, for the Church - the Church established by law, with a variety of ancient privileges - looks very poor if it seeks exemption from the Equality Act.  A martyrdom of principle would be honourable, but to retain special treatment from the state whilst not taking on board the state's norms looks really quite unprincipled.  Many -apparently most, in fact - in the Church of England share something like this view, of course.

Christians seem to have a track record of treating things as true which they'd like to be true, even when they are not - and everyone else can see it.  That can be embarrassing sometimes.  When it's used to defend the indefensible, it's even worse.

2012/10/07

honesty

Vaughan Roberts is one of my neighbours - not that I could claim to know him.  He's also the Rector of St. Ebbe's church in Oxford, which I think you'd have to say is close to the extreme end of the Evangelical party in the Church of England.  He's a council member of Reform, and that entails giving annual assent to a whole raft of fairly hard-line propositions.

So, his recent interview in which he describes his own same-sex attraction - he seems to be happy to identify it as a 'battle' - is noteworthy.  I don't at all agree with most of his approach or conclusions, but I must respect him for speaking up in this way.

2012/09/25

Review: When God Talks Back

When God Talks Back:
Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God 

T. M. Luhrmann 


I read this book soon after the last one I reviewed - The Bible Made Impossible.  Bible and Prayer are truly central parts of the Christian story - so these two together represent something of a rationalist onslaught against traditional approaches to faith.

That's not to say that Luhrmann has set out to undermine faith as such.  I'd say that the book could be read without blushes by both thinking Evangelicals and atheists alike. This is no small achievement.  That's not to say that her analysis is not quite close to the bone: the dispassionate observation of the behaviour of believers is striking in its precision, and in a sense devastating because it strips away much of the mystical component often associated with prayer and hearing God's voice.

The author is an anthropologist and psychologist.  Her approach to her topic was, I guess the classic technique modelled by countless researchers: just as some will embed themselves with remote jungle tribes in order better to understand them, she joined herself to Vineyard Fellowships over a period of several years.  She worshipped and socialized with her subjects, attending study groups, retreats and courses as well as the main public services and gatherings.  She describes - without side or any sense of disparaging - the way that believers are taught and practice their prayer life, and how they describe what they have heard and done.

The work is scholarly and well-footnoted. It manages detachment without becoming impersonal: we hear the voices of the subjects under study, and the author's own reactions and reflections, too.  She began the process as an agnostic [or that is the impression I formed - I can't find a reference for this], but in a note in the last chapter describes her own journey to a form of faith: not to the point of calling herself a Christian, but certainly to understanding God in much the same way as those she has worshipped amongst. This may detract from the objectiveness of the narrative sustained throughout - but is some testimony to the strength of the common life she experienced among the Vineyard folks.

The core of the book is a narrative of her Vineyard experiences, and reflection upon them.  But it is leavened with well-researched histories of relevant topics, and considerations of other spiritualities - within Christianity and beyond - and how they may be compared with the material she is documenting first-hand.

The conclusion?  I suppose the over-arching conclusion would be that there is much learned behaviour, and that genuinely altered states of consciousness are achieved through classical spiritual disciplines of prayer and meditation.  She even undertakes an experiment where participants are given different spiritual exercises to follow for an extended period - and document their spiritual responses and experiences. She observes along the way that her subjects are not idiots - well aware of the scepticism of those around them about their interactions with an invisible being whom they believe has a real impact on their lives.  Nor, she says with professional judgement, are they suffering from mental illness or showing any classical signs of psychosis.  Mental disorder, she notes, is almost always troubling and disturbing; prayer is at worst neutral and more commonly  positive experience for the participants.

There is much more to the book.  I do not claim to have summarised the results, nor even necessarily detailed the most important observations - just some of those that struck me.  I have argued elsewhere that the Christian community needs a new theology of prayer for the 21st Century.  T. M. Luhrmann's analysis robs prayer of none of its depth, yet strips away a lot of the overlaid and (to my mind) unwanted narrative: it's a big step in the right direction.

2012/08/03

review: The Bible Made Impossible


The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture
Christian Smith


The main title is quite attention-grabbing, perhaps, but the subtitle is a much more accurate description of the book.  Smith sets out first to show that an approach to biblical interpretation which he calls biblicism is commonplace among [American] Evangelicals, and beyond, and then to show why it necessarily completely lacks coherence - that it is an impossible position.

This 'biblicism' is a collection of beliefs surrounding the bible, relating to how to read, understand, and use it.  Smith lists ten characteristics which he says are commonplace but not universal characteristics; they include

  • democratic perspicuity: any reasonably intelligent person can read the Bible in his or her own language and correctly understand the plain meaning of the text;
  • solo sciptura: the significance of any given biblical text can be understood without reliance on creeds, confessions, historical church traditions, or other forms of larger theological hermeneutical frameworks, such that theological formulations can be built up directly out of the Bible from scratch;
  • inductive method: all matters of Christian belief and practice can be learned by sitting down with the Bible and piecing together through careful study the clear "biblical" truths that it teaches
and so on.  Though seldom stated in this way, the list is unexceptionable - Christians in the broad sweep of Evangelical churches, and some way beyond, would read the list and nod at most of them.  Smith backs up the latter point by reference to literature - scholarly and popular - which explicitly embraces one or more of these ideas. Some of this evidence looks a little over-the-top, but the complete effect is really unarguable.  

And then the punch: the problem of interpretive pluralism.  In short, the fact that many diligent readers of the Bible, whilst praying for inspiration from the Holy Spirit, reach seemingly diametrically opposed conclusions about a whole range of important matters.  These of course range from the nature of Christ's work on the cross, through the meaning and understanding of the sacraments, eschatology, predestination, how the church is to be ordered, and much more.  In short, they touch upon most of the major themes of personal and corporate Christian life.  How, then, can the Bible be treated as a handbook for living, if its readers do not agree about what it says?  

He anticipates a number of counter-arguments - but all tend to strengthen his argument.  How can Bible reading alone be sufficient to understand God's will for us, if we disagree about what it means?   We might attribute that disagreement to sin and fallenness on the part of the interpreters: but that rather nullifies the idea that we who are sinners can learn all we need to from the Bible, under the Holy Spirit's guidance.  We might imagine that many Christians manage to appraise a part of the truth - but that the whole council of God is much larger and will not be grasped this side of eternity (this could be expanded into a whole argument about postmodern readings): but this seems to say that God has not performed his goal of self-revelation very well, and that none of us can know the truth.

All of this (and more) is in chapters 1 and 2. The argument is carefully articulated, from a number of angles and perspectives, and with lots of evidence: the very idea of biblicism is impossible because it doesn't give rise to the outcome it intends; it is self-defeating. Chapters 3 and 4 develop the theme a little further, and present a range of subsidiary points.  The remainder of the book tries to be constructive, instead of leaving the reader in a nihilistic place.  It's much less convincing - the author himself admits that the first part of the book is the most important - but seems a reasonable thing to do.  

The book's purpose is narrow - to take issue with biblicism - and deliberately avoids discussions of inerrancy and other ideas on infallibility.  Indeed, Smith claims that nothing he says is at odds with an inerrantist view: that seems a stretch to me; as if to say that the bible can be regarded as inerrant as long as you don't take it literally.  But I take his general point - one can receive the Bible as the inspired word of God without buying into a biblicist position which is, in any case, rather a recent (if now pervasive) position.  

Though I think it declines in quality as it progresses (save for the last chapter, which reverses the trend), I like the book a lot.  It is thoughtful, careful, and winsome:  a narrow thesis is advanced and demonstrated.  No over-bold claims are made, and there doesn't seem to be much of an attempt to shock.  That said, the implications of his argument are far-reaching indeed.  Far from being simply an intellectual game, this stuff makes a difference.  Protestantism is divided into almost countless denominations, each of which believes it has received a slightly purer truth than its neighbours.  And not just big denominations: several small, more-or-less independent churches meet within a mile or so of the church I belong to, each separated from the others not just by its sense of mission and what's important, but also on aspects of belief and practice.  Jesus prayed for believers to have unity - but our approach to truth drives us in completely the opposite direction.  It's both intellectually untenable, as Smith demonstrates, and also profoundly damaging in practice.

I commend the book to you, dear reader!
 


2012/07/24

perspective

I liked this article in Patrol Magazine, responding to a widely-cited column from the weekend's New York Times.  The latter talked of decline - specifically in the American Episcopal church - reflected in falling congregations.  Fitzgerald - editor at Patrol - argues
But the bottom line is, though it may seem self-evident that declining church attendance is evidence of something gone wrong, would we rather see churches that accommodate society’s ills grow? Isn’t it more likely that a faith that asks more than we can naturally give, that compels us to believe in things we can’t see, and calls us to live in ways that are counter to our own self interests, would find itself at odds with the prevailing culture?
And that seems very much in line with what I blogged about  a few months back, motivated by a quote from Rick Warren asserting almost the opposite - that the churches of which Fitzgerald speaks are 'in decline' precisely because they have embraced the prevailing culture. Which perspective makes more sense?

2012/07/18

ain't seen nothing yet

There are people trying to whip up anti-Creationist sentiment against some of England's new free schools.  Depending on whom you believe, this is a great affront to science - and a damage to some children's education - or a storm in a mis-communicated tea-cup.  My guess would be that the truth lies somewhere in the middle.  It would be illegal to teach young earth creationism as a scientific theory, as I understand it, and so science lessons are not under direct threat.  On the other hand, they might be undermined by the tone of religious education lessons, one supposes, depending on how successfully the teachers can handle nuanced epistemology.  It seems reasonable to fear the worst, if those setting up the free schools have a track record on this sort of stuff.

What baffles me, though, is the way that Creationism seems to get to be the totemic issue in the utterly false debate about science versus faith.  Sure, it's nice stark place to make a comparison - if you overlook the way that Genesis chapter 1 is quite clearly a form of stylized writing, not unlike a poem.  But, really, there are  countless bible stories which those of a fundamentalist disposition might take as historical accounts (talking donkeys?  the sun standing still?) when they are really very difficult to reconcile with our normal experience of the world.  Worse, the chronology - or, indeed, the outright historicity - of some of the biblical passages which purport to give an account of past events is also at odds with the best available archaeology.

We may brush aside Genesis as an ahistorical story to make a point about the sovereignty of God - and his character in contrast to that of the gods in the Babylonian legends.  But if we observe that there is scant evidence for David being the great king who he is presented as, we begin to strike at the heart of a much bigger, broader tradition of biblical interpretation.  Christians - even thoughtful educated ones - would rather look the other way than face up to the fact that St. Paul almost certainly didn't write all the letters which bear his name.  And when questions arise about the accuracy of the biblical text we have received, well, we'd just rather not think about that.

Scholarship has a huge amount to say about the biblical text, its transmission and original content, the context and timing of its writing, and much else beside.  The theories of all those scholars will not be precise or perfect, and will be subject to revision over time.  Taken together, though, the study which has gone into the history, archaeology, linguistics, and the rest, has a huge amount to say to biblical interpretation.  And most of it is barred from being heard in our churches.

Instead we too often - particularly in the Evangelical world - have the conceit that we can take an English translation made in the 21st century and discern the intention of the original authors from reading it alone.  Even if someone could come to this bible afresh for the first time as an educated adult, the very language they speak, the language in which the translation is expressed, and the way in which we construct knowledge as a society have all co-evolved in the years since the text was written.


Young Earth Creationism is a great topic for secular humanists to get concerned about in education.  It does indeed represent a threat to the good teaching of science: but really it's just scratching the surface of a mind-set which is all too often thoroughly wedded to a pre-modern way of viewing things.  There are much bigger fish to fry.

2012/05/29

review: Indescribable

review: Indescribable, by Louie Giglio

Our church is watching Loiue Giglio DVDs week-by-week at the moment.  I've missed most of these, but caught Indescribable last evening.  Indescribable is a good word ... perhaps one of the few printable ones I have at my fingertips to sum it up.

I wasn't sure whether to write this review - I try not to be overly negative or critical here (no, really, I do try) - but, well, the experience has stuck in my mind so perhaps it does it justice to report it.

Giglio is a preacher/pastor in Atlanta, and evidently undertakes tours with an audio-visual presentation -this one is several years old now.  Evidently he is at the heart of something called the Passion Movement which one reviewer on Amazon thought was hugely preferable to being associated with the emerging church.  So I warmed to the idea immediately (well, I can try irony).  I did Google around for his name beforehand, and found that the more reformed and fundamentalist souls distrust him - so I thought he had that at least in his favour.

Speaking to a huge, somewhat whipped-up, crowd, with a slick presentation didn't really endear him to me.  Worse, well-known manipulative speaking techniques were used throughout - rather a lot of exuberant shouting, followed sharply by intimate whispered punchlines - which seemed a bit irresponsible to me (though, if you are a speaker, an easy trap to fall into, I admit).  Combine this with speaking over a weird ethereal kind of music, while looking at pictures of constellations and galaxies, with a handful (really only a handful) of carefully-plucked scripture references, and doubtless you have the audience eating out of the palm of your hand.

The central thesis of Indescribable was that the universe is awfully big and complex, and that God made it all.  Drawing on Isaiah 40 - he who called out the starry host and calls them each by name - juxtaposed with a saviour who knows us all (and the hairs on our heads, though I don't recall that verse being invoked), the Almighty's power, wisdom, strength - and personal love and compassion are estimated indescribable. An image of the saviour on the cross cuts across the pictures of galaxies (to be followed by a cross-shaped formation in the heavens) to bring the point home.  The resurrection didn't get much of a look-in, but perhaps it was beside the point.

The breathless scientific presentation was largely inoffensive - the pictures were accompanied with an account of some of the big numbers which accompany astronomy, and frequent references to the speed of light - light issuing forth from the mouth of the creator.  He declared himself a friend of science - and didn't make any  gross mis-statements of fact that I noticed - but the sharpness of this was dimmed somewhat by a studied careful avoidance of offending the young earth creationists.  The account of the numbers was big on distance numbers, short on time - the age of the universe didn't get a mention.  To explore one without the other seems to border on the dishonest (it would be unfair to suggest that this was to protect sales - bearing with the weaker souls who cannot bear this would be the generous interpretation).

 There are much better presenters of the cosmology stuff - Brian Cox springs to mind.  He doesn't, of course,  weave scripture references into his breathless wide-eyed commentary, but I don't think the awe-inspiring vision of the universe is particularly diminished by that.  I didn't warm to Louie Giglio, and I rather doubt I shall join any of the other sessions our church is running.


2012/05/26

face-palm

I've seen many permutations and combinations of life, lifestyle, opinion, and more, but this one still took me a little by surprise, together with the next tabs on the same page. All part of life's rich tapestry, I guess -  but maybe only in America?

2012/05/01

retrospective

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/02/18/the-biblical-view-thats-younger-than-the-happy-meal/

This is a nice discussion of a little bit of history. It has broader implications for epistemology and hermeneutics also.

2012/04/10

sufficient grace

I was struck by a comment from Rick Warren.  He was apparently being interviewed on ABC, repeating some nonsense about his principled objection to "same sex marriage".  He was asked about the prospect of his church adapting its views, as wider culture changes.  His response:

WARREN: Actually, history shows that when the church accommodates culture, it weakens it. This is why there is a very weak church in Europe today. It’s almost non-existent in many areas.

Now, that is hard to defend - and shows a staggering lack of self-awareness.  But the striking sentence is the middle one.  The implication is that strength is good and weakness is bad.  But I'm just not sure that that is a Kingdom principle.  Of course, context is all-important.  But in general, I'm not sure that the message of Christ is about a need to be strong, powerful, or influential.  St. Paul was assured that God's strength was made perfect in his weakness; he said that God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.

All this is a little reminiscent of the view of a certain man from Seattle who bemoaned Great Britain's lack of famous bible teachers.

Oh the irony.  If we have a business model of church, with franchises spread around the country (or the world), then fame, strength, and influence will be all-important.  But might there not be a chance, just a little one, that this is the embrace of wider culture, precisely the thing Warren complains about?  The Kingdom is different from that.  It's summed up by a man at the end of himself, hung on a cross. 

2012/04/01

feeling unapologetic

Some spam in my mailbox asks if I'm Fed up with being told that Christianity is a fairy-tale?  Premier Christian Radio is evidently hosting an event on Reasons to Believe, with catchy talks on topics like God & Science: Cosmic Reasons to Believe in Christ.  I confess to having more than a little sympathy with the fairy-tale side of the house.  Not because I think that Christian faith is as useful today as the story of Snow White, but if anything quite the contrary.  There are rather too many Christians whose pitch seems to have the implicit sub-title "Fairy tales you can believe in".  Traditional apologetics seems to be busy answering all the wrong questions.

A new book by Richard Beck apparently brings a related perspective.  Richard writes a good blog, so I'm hopeful of a good book - when it eventually hits these shores.  He writes
The goal of this book is to answer a question: Why do people believe in God? More specifically, this book is aimed at answering a particular form of this question, a nuance that emerged in the modern period through the work of thinkers such as Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, and, of particular importance for this book, Sigmund Freud. The shift in emphasis in “the God question” occasioned by these thinkers has rendered much of Christian theology and apologetics effectively useless in addressing many contemporary criticisms of religious faith. The playing field has shifted. And a new kind of apologetics is needed.
And that opening line makes for an interesting question.  Not one best tackled by rehearsing the tenets of mediaeval metaphysics.  Dawkins poetically and accurately observes that believing in God  is as rational as believing in the Flying Spaghetti Monster (with all his noodly appendages).   Well, it's accurate in one particular form of rationality - but the notable, gaping hole in the argument is that there are a large number of people who do believe in God (generally involuntarily, as I discussed previously), and for a large number of these, that belief leads to action of one kind or another.  Notwithstanding the adherent of the Jedi creed who had a place on Channel 4's 4thought.tv slot, I don't think that the church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has any active communicants.  The interesting, rational, testable bit of Christian Faith is the impact it has upon the lives of its adherents - and the impact (for good or ill) which they have on the rest of the world.

If objective truth exists, it does so independently of the democratic will  Things can be true even if no one believes them, and having two billion adherents does not necessarily validate a belief system.  However, things done in the name of Christ have a substantial impact on the world today, and for that reason alone, his followers need to be taken seriously.  Moreover, they need to take themselves seriously, since it is surely by clinging to the outdated (and the already falsified) that the central message of Christ is obscured, and worse.

I can think of many reasons for the life of faith - and I don't think they need apology in either sense of the word.  I think I'd find the Rollins school of faith and philosophy the source of some better questions (if only I understood him better) - with his current blog title to believe is human; to doubt, divine.  

2012/03/22

more in sorrow

I've always had this love/hate thing with the Mark Driscoll phenomenon of Mars Hill in Seattle, and have blogged about this here, here, here (I even visited for myself), here, and probably several more. Often, my perspective has been one of wry amusement and bewilderment - and I keep resolving to avoid paying any more attention to what sometimes seems like a bizarre self-parody.

But lately, there's been a slew of rather more disturbing blogs, including

Mars Hill has also issued a Call for Reconciliation.

I suppose the latter is helpful, but, wait: how many churches of a few thousand members (or tens of thousands of members, is it now?) have sown so much discontent that they need to issue such a call?  Perhaps theirs is a righteous prophetic ministry, and the dissenters just can't handle it.  Perhaps not.

To this outsider, it seems like a change of phase, that the end game is on its way.  An organisation with this many structural tensions doesn't end well, unless you work very actively to resolve those tensions.  Driscoll has many followers, and I assume has strengthened the faith of many. Explosive fallings-out would have much fall-out. May the whole thing get unwound gently and with grace.  Lord, have mercy.

2012/03/20

a matter of choice

The competing concerns of various kinds of rights seem to be seldom out of the news at the moment.  This is not least because of the government's consultation on marriage equality, and the fear of certain churchpeople that this is somehow (despite being explicitly not related to religious weddings) an attack on faith (if not civilization itself).  I've blogged on that topic before, and will try to do so again soon.

British law on equality protects against discrimination on the grounds of a number of protected characteristics.  These include age, sex, orientation, religion or belief.  I've seen quite a few comments suggesting that this is uneven, because many of these are innate, whereas religion is a matter of choice - and so religious discrimination is more forgiveable (or its protection a lower class of right) than, say, discrimination on the grounds of age or sex (or, at the most politically charged point, sexual orientation).  If religion is a choice - on a par with choosing MacDonald's over Burger King, or Mazda over Honda, or real ale over lager - then it is plainly not as worthy of respect as some other protected characteristics.

But is faith a matter of choice?

I can't speak for everyone, nor every kind of faith.  In our society which celebrates consumer choice, shopping for a religion, eventually choosing the Marks and Spencer version, seems to make sense.   But is it really like that?

It strikes me that if you believe in God - for whatever reason - it is very hard simply to choose to stop. You could announce that you no longer believe - but that could easily be a lie.  Belief strikes me as a deep-down - possibly irrational - confidence in something, which is hard to shake.  Perhaps the gulf between people of faith and those with none is that either struggles to comprehend the state of mind of the other.

Lots of people believe things on the basis of flimsy evidence, or indeed, believe in a counter-factual kind of way.  Decades (centuries?) of science teaching have failed to persuade large numbers of people that heavy and light objects fall at the same speed [ok; they fall with the same acceleration, to be more precise].  Belief is hard to shake - whether based on truth or falsehood, or something else.

I assume that this isn't a new thought: presumably the framers of statements of human rights gave status to belief alongside race and sex and the rest for higher reasons than being afraid of the religionists.  And yet it seems to be being missed by a lot of well-meaning but rather shrill people.  

I'm not for a moment arguing that people of faith should be able to ride roughshod over the sensibilities of gay people - but the converse is also problematic.  The way of Christ seems altogether a better account of how to bear with each other:

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
(Philippians 2:3,4, NIV)