Mind Space

Free at Last?

Earlier this week I visited Free at Last?; an exhibition about slavery, in All Hallows by the Tower and on a ship moored in the Thames. The exhibition explores the history of the transatlantic slave trade, and about slavery and human trafficking in the world today.

The centre of the exhibition is a visit to a ship similar in design to the slaver Zong, In 1781, the Zong was embarking on the 'middle passage', taking slaves from West Africa to England. The ship was overloaded, and malnutrition and disease took their toll on slaves and crew. The captain, Sir Luke Collingwood, decided to put the remaining sick slaves overboard, in order to make an insurance claim for loss of cargo in transit. This shocking action, whilst legal in English law, contributed to public opinion turning against the slave trade, and the success of William Wilberforce's 1807 parliamentary bill.

The exhibition told a lot of stories and imparted a lot of information through poster displays, but it was a little light on historic artifacts. The ship isn't a replica of the Zong (as claimed in the publicity), but a modern construction built to a similar design. For all that, it's a bold undertaking for a Christian charity to have undertaken.

In the hold of the ship are replica manacles, and a slave berth showing that the slaves would have had more room if they were chained into a coffin. There were no toilet facilities below deck, and the conditions were unsanitary in the extreme.

While talking to one of the volunteers staffing the exhibition, I learned that the Mayor of London withdrew a significant contribution to the costs of the exhibition because of its Christian content. I tried to resist being embroiled in a Daily Mail-style conversation about all that's wrong with the Mayor, but if the story was reported to me accurately, it is sad that faith content is a bar to the mayor supporting an otherwise worthwhile  initiative. Had the exhibition contained content about another world religion, I wonder if the decision would have been the same.

Ghost Town; Chernobyl 20 years on

So it's 20 years since reactor 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded. Like most people at the time, I thought that Russia was a world away, and failed to grasp the enormity of what had happened, perhaps because the USSR worked hard to keep the disaster a secret for as long as possible. The magnitude and environmental impact of the explosion only really hit home in the early 1990's, when I worked for the UK Atomic Energy Authority alongside colleagues who were making regular visits to Chernobyl to advise on the clear up.

Two or three years ago I discovered the web journal of  Elena Filatova (link below). Elena is a writer, historian, biker, and Kiev resident. Her journal includes writings and photographs from a bike ride around Chernobyl. It's a terrific read, and, since she's given permission for it to be reproduced freely, I'll quote an extract;

Dad is nuclear physicist, and he has educated me about many things. He is much more worried about the speed my bike travels than about the direction I point it.

My trips to Chernobyl are not like a walk in the park, but the risk can be managed. Sometimes I go for rides alone, sometimes with pillion passenger, but never in company with any other vehicle, because I do not want anyone to raise dust in front of me.

I was a schoolgirl back in 1986 and as soon as radiation level began to rise in Kiev, dad put all of us on the train to grandma's house. Granny lives 800 kms from here and dad wasn't sure if it was far enough away to keep us out of reach of the big bad wolf of a nuclear meltdown.

The Communist government that was in power then kept silent about this accident. In Kiev, they forced people to take part in their preciously stupid labor day parade and it was then that ordinary people began hearing the news of the accident from foreign radio stations and relatives of those who died. The real panic began 7-10 days after accident. Those who were exposed to the exceedingly high levels of nuclear radiation in the first 10 days when it was still a state secret, including unsuspecting visitors to the area, either died or have serious health problems.

Link: Ghost Town

The Fatal Shore

Since I'm now in Australia, it seems only appropriate to record some thoughts on Robert Hughes' book on the history of convict transportation to that wondrous land. The Fatal Shore is a history of British convict transportation to Australia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The first fleet arrived in Botany Bay, south of modern Sydney, in 1788. It was the answer to the problem of how to deal with the ‘convict class’ in Georgian Britain. What followed is a tale of brave exploration of a vast unknown land, oppression of native peoples, and, all too often, the brutalisation of people who had committed the most minor crimes.

In exploring the history of ‘the system’ under which prisoners were detained, Hughes adds colour to historical analysis by including first-hand accounts from convicts, free settlers and other officials wherever possible. He offers a gripping narrative from which stand out two points. The first concerns Australian shame at ‘the stain’ of their convict ancestry. Modern Sydney’s lack of buildings dating back to the period bears testimony to Australian attempts to erase the stain from memory. One notable exception is the Hyde Park prisoner barracks, which now houses a fine museum but was, until the 1970’s, a decaying public office, surrounded by rusting tin sheds. The history of the barracks is symptomatic of a country that is only recently coming to terms with its past.

The second point concerns ideas about crime and punishment in Georgian Britain. Hughes describes many debates about whether the aim of detention was punishment or reformation, and on the outcome of these debates hung the severity of conditions for deported convicts. For much of the period, the ‘convict class’ (itself a telling phrase) was seen as irremediable, and the criminal justice system was concerned mostly with putting them out of harms way, for which the Australian settlements were supremely useful. Whilst the tide of opinion today has turned towards reformation, many of the debates are still echoing today.

The god I don’t believe in

As I threatened in a previous post, I have written an article for the Church magazine on the new series by Richard Dawkins. Here's the article;

Atheism is getting a good airing this month. Evolutionary Biologist Richard Dawkins’ new series,
Root of all evil? has been showing on Channel 4, and on Radio 4, historian David Starkey has a series called Who killed Christianity? Both men pose some important questions for thinking Christians, and I’d like to use this letter to look at some of the things they have to say.

Starkey first. He’s an entertaining and erudite presenter, whose central theme is that Christ’s followers down the ages have altered Jesus’ message to the extent that Christianity and the church as we know them today would hardly be recognisable to our founder. The first two programmes looked at Paul, who took the gospel to the gentiles, and Emperor Constantine, who made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. Amidst lively debate with Christians and academics, Starkey describes how the message was changed and damaged by these people. Now Starkey knows that good radio requires controversy, and that at times he is playing devil’s advocate for the sake of entertainment and education. Yet it seems to me that change, far from killing Christianity off, has been vital to its relevance and vitality in new situations. Jesus never gave his followers a manual for how to organise the church, nor a fully-worked out code of ethics for handling imperial roman power, let alone the world of the internet. Jesus trusted that his followers would use their creative ingenuity, guided by his own teachings, the indwelling Spirit, and the traditions of the faith, to ensure that the timeless Good News of the Kingdom would be proclaimed afresh in every age. It will be very interesting to see if Starkey recognises this in future programmes.

Richard Dawkins is a remarkable scientist and communicator of science. His writing conveys a sense of awe and beauty at the world, and at the explanative power of science. I was sad, but not surprised, that his new series is a vicious attack on faith. He visits Lourdes, and comments that the pilgrims in torchlight procession are on the slippery slope that leads to bombs in rucksacks. Interviewing a pilgrim, his style is kindly, but ridiculing as the woman explains that her pilgrimage has deepened her faith.

Though scenes such as this show Dawkins in a poor light, he says much that I agree with. He points up the poor grasp of science of an American preacher, and is treated very nastily in return. Visiting a fundamentalist convert to Islam in Jerusalem, Dawkins is told that atheists can have no morality, that 9/11 is a legitimate response to Israeli incursions against Arab territory, that Islam will one day take over the world, and that we should prepare for it by ‘fixing’ the way ‘our’ women dress. Dawkins’ interviewees present appalling views, and Dawkins wants us to be appalled. The vast majority of Moslems are moderate, prayerful, and deeply opposed to violence. Of course, Dawkins didn’t interview one of the majority, because that wouldn’t suit his argument. He fails to recognise that poverty, injustice and oppression provide the conditions in which religion becomes a vehicle for protest. His argument is akin to asking us to reject all science because some science was used in the service of Nazi eugenics, or the construction of the atom bomb.

All areas of human life can be used for evil as well as good. Dawkins rightly condemns faith that is violent, bigoted, or closed to alternative views. But babies and bathwater spring to mind. The god he rails against isn’t the God I believe in.

Whilst Starkey presents an informative, thoughtful debate, the vitriolic plausibility of Dawkins will probably sway many viewers who have never thought about the issues before. Atheists deserve the same respect and attentiveness that we afford to people of any faith. But when they engage in arguments such as these, we need to respond.

So watch the programmes if you get the chance! Talk to your friends about them, and don’t let Dawkins’ views be accepted uncritically. Instead, let’s remind ourselves, and others, that God leads us to seek peace, reject violence, and listen attentively to people of other faiths, to science, and to the Bible.