Respecting Your Opponent's View

Evening All! Am now reporting live from Falmouth. It's good to be back :-)

This.

This story in the Observer and the Guardian, if true, is worrying. Deeply worrying. Mainly because Twitter, fittingly, seems to have become possessed with rage as a result.

A high-flying prospective Conservative MP, credited with shaping many of the party's social policies, founded a church that tried to "cure" homosexuals by driving out their "demons" through prayer.


Philippa Stroud, who is likely to win the Sutton and Cheam seat on Thursday and is head of the Centre for Social Justice, the thinktank set up by the former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, has heavily influenced David Cameron's beliefs on subjects such as the family. A popular and energetic Tory, she is seen as one of the party's rising stars.

Now, understand where I'm coming from here. I'm a Liberal Conservative, and am also a Christian. So I am personally for the idea of a marriage between one man and one woman. However, I am not going to lay into you and say you're posessed just because you say "I don't believe in what the Bible says". I'll still invite you to Church and CU Events, mind: but that's because I want you to understand the viewpoint of me and my friends, not so I can crush yours into oblivion. Judge not, lest ye be judged, so the verse goes.

Therefore, reading this article (which you can find here) left me somewhat alarmed. Mainly because of this next bit...

Stroud and her husband, David, a minister in the New Frontiers church, allied to the US evangelical movement, left the project in the late 1990s to establish another church in Birmingham. Angela Paterson, who was an administrator at the Bedford church, said: "With hindsight, the thing that freaks me out was everybody praying that a demon would be cast out of me because I was gay. Anything – drugs, alcohol or homosexuality, they thought you had a demon in you."

This sounds suspiciously to me like some sort of brainwashing cult. And I am not, repeat not, a fan of such things. If you want to pray for someone, fine. But surely it's possible to do it without abandoning sensitivity?

The story may not be completely true: bear in mind, it's been published by two newspapers that support the Liberal Democrats, and are therefore anti-Tory. But for the sake of discussion, let's go with this theory that the appropriate response to someone living "a life of sin" is to cast out the demon. If I commit a sin, does that automatically mean I have a demon inside me? Because I've read the majority of the New Testament, and I have to say, I don't recall it actually saying that. According to that argument, we have demons inside us 24/7, because I've yet to go through a day without committing a sin: envy, greed, sloth, and so on.

In any case, people who steal money, lie, etc are contradicting what the Bible teaches just as much as someone who has an alcohol addiction. But that doesn't mean they have a demon in them, it just means they've done something that the Bible says is morally wrong. Something we all do.

I may be thoroughly displeased if my friend tells me they're having unprotected sex before marriage, but that doesn't mean I'm going to frogmarch them down to the nearest chemist's, does it? In the same way, most agnostics/atheists do not march down to the neareast Church and yell "Leeeeeeave Richard Dawkins aloooooone! He's a huuuumaaaaan!" Wonderful thing, common sense. It allows you to rise above the issue, not descend to mud-slinging, and to get on with living your life.

This is not to say that you should never talk about your beliefs, or that discussions with people who hold opposite views to yours are a bad idea: but bear in mind you are going to offend someone if you say "I don't care what you think, I'm right and you're wrong." And in any case, that's not how you win an argument!

This is probably the part that disturbed me most, apparently taken from her book:

"One girl lived in the hostel for some time, became a Christian, then choked to death on her own vomit after a drinking bout. Her life had changed to some extent, but we wondered whether God knew that she hadn't the will to stick with it and was calling her home."

How does that not shock anyone reading that? This girl has died in a horrendous fashion and your effective response is "Not a problem"?

This is the infuriating position of a Liberal Conservative. Move too far left, and I appear to be saying that I approve of same-sex marriages, abortion and the like. I personally do not, but to suggest that people can't be angry at me for adopting such a stance is horribly naive: Christians have always been persecuted for their beliefs.

Move too far right, on the other hand, and I am effectively saying that people have no choice in the matter: "You don't believe in what I believe in? Well, if that isn't tremendously bad luck for you, my man. Now, off you go to be burnt at the stake." This also suggests that I have to agree with what other Christians say no matter what: but that isn't true either. I may be a sister in Christ with Philippa, but that doesn't mean I can't be disappointed by what she's written in her book.

Regardless of your beliefs, free will is integral. You cannot deny Philippa Stroud freedom of speech: fair enough. If she wants to stand up for what she believes in, that must be allowed to happen. But for her fellow Conservatives to not expect a backlash; for someone to disagree with them; to believe that their stance is infallible; that is what leads to sheer narrow-mindedness. It smacks of an arrogance that no political party can afford to take root. Not that I would accuse Philippa Stroud of being arrogant, but after all the negative campaigning by the Conservatives over the past month, they cannot really be too surprised that people are angry. Attacking an opponent by calling him a Nazi or a bigot will, at least in theory, provoke a similar response.

Talking about the choice of parties yesterday, and how some are more "religiously tolerant" than others, one of my fellow Christians yesterday wondered out loud why religion and politics do not always work well together. In a world where we need to be more understanding of people whose views are not the same as ours, instead of roaring messages of hell and damnation at people we've never met, this is perhaps an example of why we need to show sensitivity whilst sticking to our principles. If you don't, whether you're a militant atheist or a hockey mom, the result will be the same: you will alienate people.

You have a choice to disagree with what I'm saying. In anyone's book, that has to be a good thing. But if you are expecting me to automatically agree with your beliefs, whilst at the same time repeatedly attacking my own, you cannot expect me to simply hold my tongue and stay silent.

"If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone."

The Evening Stanners