Is the Lord’s Prayer offensive?
While I have been in the States for the weekend, I get together that back in the UK y'all've been experiencing a little local difficulty in relation to prayer, gratis speech, and the movie house. Digital Movie house Media (DCM), owned by Cineworld and Odeon and decision-making nigh 80% of cinema advertising, decided non to screen a sixty-2nd advert produced past the Church building of England to promote its new website JustPray.uk. 'The Church' (in the form of Arun Arora, its Director of Communications) thought it was "really astonishing, disappointing and rather bewildering", adding that the "plain lightheaded" conclusion could have a "spooky effect" on costless speech communication. Justin Welby was (according to the Mail service on Lord's day) 'furious':
I observe it extraordinary that cinemas dominion that it is inappropriate for an ad on prayer to be shown in the week before Christmas when nosotros celebrate the nascence of Jesus Christ.
Giles Fraser deployed the nice phrase 'nonsense on stilts' (though 'stupidity on stilts' might have been more alliterative) and is not impressed:
I'm deplorable, but the whole affair stinks. If you are offended by the Lord'south Prayer yous are too easily offended.
Interestingly, Richard Dawkins agrees. So what is going on here?
I know that we shouldn't let the facts go in the fashion of our outrage, but information technology is worth pausing to consider what has actually happened.
- The advertizement was planned some time ago, and with the agreement of DCM, who actually offered the Church a discount for one of the prime slots.
- The ads were cleared by the Movie house Advertizement Authority and the British Board of Film Classification.
- Nonetheless, DCM so had a change of heart, as they realised that the ad would contravene their policy of not broadcasting religious or political messages.
- One slightly confusing cistron is that, in previous years, they accept immune ads for the Blastoff form to exist screened.
- Still, the new policy was introduced following the screening of both 'Yes' and 'No' ads during the referendum for Scottish independence, which resulted in some very negative responses.
- DCM never really said that the Lord'due south Prayer, nor the C of E advertizing, would cause offence. It refers to the reasoning behind the general policy: "some advertisements – unintentionally or otherwise – could crusade offence to those of differing political persuasions, as well as to those of differing faiths and indeed of no faith," and that "in this regard, DCM treats all political or religious behavior every bit".
The firsthand difficulty in all this is that, as has happened before, it turns out that those of other faiths don't take much of a trouble with media exposure of Christian organized religion, in part because their ain religious tradition involves a respect for Christianity and sees points of shared values, and in part because they recognise that they are living in a land which has historically been shaped past Christian faith, and so its prominence is no surprise to them.
The banana secretary general of the Muslim Council of Great britain, Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra, said: 'I am flabbergasted that anyone would find this prayer offensive to anybody, including people of no item religious belief.'
And, if Richard Dawkins is right, atheists don't have a problem either. (Information technology is perhaps worth noting that Dawkins would exist happy to fund the distribution of Bibles in schools in order to show children what a thoroughly wicked book information technology is—but this does not announced to exist his reasoning hither.)
At this signal information technology is worth pausing to enquire what we think a better issue would accept looked like. Suppose that the ad had gone ahead, and that in a couple of months the Muslim Quango itself had decided to run an advertising promoting Islam. Or, fifty-fifty more controversially, there was an ad promoting Scientology, which 2 years ago was recognised by the supreme court to exist a organized religion in the U.k.. Under Equality legislation, it would certainly have been incommunicable for the DCM to allow one religion to advertise, whilst blocking others. Would we be happy to see ads screened for any religious movement that could afford it? I am not certain that I would.
Nick Baines, Bishop of Leeds, sounds exasperated by the whole affair—and 1 part of his argument is that the Lord's Prayer has a universality about it.
The fact is: people pray. Billions of people across the globe pray the Lord'south Prayer every twenty-four hour period. For some Christians in some parts of the Middle Eastward and Africa, the utterance of this prayer can amount to a death sentence. Yet, information technology is a prayer I have seen uttered by those committed to other faiths, just who run across in this prayer – taught to his friends by Jesus – a fundamental recognition of human being, human need, and the realities of man feel.
I am not sure I am really persuaded by this line of thinking. Information technology might suit the calendar of the Church of England in its aim of raising the profile of organized religion whilst being equally inoffensive as possible, but it is non really true to what the prayer says. In the neighbouring role of Yorkshire, Steve Croft, Bishop of Sheffield, wonders whether DCM have in fact made the right decision.
I disagree with their decision and I disagree with the reasons they accept given. I promise it's reversed. I don't believe the film will offend or upset audiences, in the way they mean, and I don't believe information technology creates a new precedent. Simply from the point of view of global corporations and consumer culture, from the perspective of the gods and spirits of the age, there are very good reasons indeed to ban the Lord's Prayer from cinemas and from civilisation and from public life.
He then goes on to explore, very engagingly, seven reasons why the Lord's Prayer might challenge assumptions, corresponding to the seven lines of most English translations. (The prayer in the Greek of the New Attestation actually has 10 poetically structured lines in Matthew 6.ix–xiii).
There are just 63 words in the Lord'southward Prayer. It takes less than a infinitesimal to say them. Yet these words shape our identity, give purpose to our lives, check our greed, remind us of our imperfections, offer a way of reconciliation, build resilience in our spirits and phone call united states to live to the glory of our creator. No wonder they accept been banned in the boardrooms of consumer culture.
I would add together something more. This is not only a religious critique of secular civilisation, or a transcendent critique of materialism. Information technology is a specifically Christian critique of culture and, past implication, of other religious outlooks besides, even if we might share some of our responses to contemporary secularism. For instance, the opening line encourages us to address God equally 'Father', which was a distinctive of Jesus in his 24-hour interval and (condign rooted in a Trinitarian understanding of God in Christian theology) is a problematic merits for many other religions. The prayer points to a quite distinctive understanding of human sinfulness, forgiveness, redemption and eschatology, admitting in summary form. In that respect, in that location is null 'by and large religious' about it at all. It is quite particularly Christian.
Nevertheless, I think Nick Baines does hit the nail on the head later in his piece:
Well, the problem is basically the illiteracy of a liberal culture that thinks itself to be intellectually mature and culturally sound. This civilisation assumes (I cull the word advisedly) that secular humanism is neutral – and self-manifestly 'truthful' – and that, past definition, whatsoever religious globe view is somewhere up the scale of irrational and loaded madness. A v-year-quondam child could demolish that one. There is no neutral space.
If you divide the world into the 'religious', within which each religious tradition has its ain set of vested interests, and the 'secular', in which we deport with rational neutrality, then the decision of DCM makes perfect sense. Refuse all religious perspectives with their interests, and stick with the simply fabric and commercial, which is 'neutral' and interest-gratis. Except, of course, it is not. The comment of DCM's finance director Paul Maloney was very revealing:
Having fully looked into the matter, I am agape we will be unable to take forrard the proposed Church of England campaign … DCM has a policy not to run advertizement connected to personal beliefs.
Organized religion, it appears, is a personal belief rather than something public or communal, whilst commercial interests transcend the merely personal and should shape our culture without question, since they are 'neutral.'
There's another reason to reject this taxonomy of perspective. On what grounds could Steve Croft suppose that allowing the ad wouldnot set a precedent? Only if Christianity in fact had a distinctive significance, over against other religious traditions, for British civilisation. The Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston, likewise an atheist, rejected the idea of the advertizing causing offence.
She wrote on Twitter: "Every bit a gentle atheist, I'm not offended by Church screening gentle cinema adverts; we shouldn't turn down our deep cultural roots in Christianity."
The ad could easily be played, without opening the floodgates of religious advertising, if it was recognised that Christianity has a unique influence on our values as Western, liberal democracy—which is, after all, why we are celebrating Christmas at all. I wonder if that is going to happen whatever fourth dimension soon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQlioMafLUQ
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