Gerry Lynch’s Blog

A Good Week for Democracy Globally

Posted on April 1, 2015 by Gerry Lynch

General Buhari holding a broom “to sweep Nigerian politics clean” at a campign rally. Photo: Heinrich Böll Foundation.

This was originally posted to Slugger O’Toole…

There was something discomfiting about the funeral of Lee Kuan Yew. Singapore’s achievements under his rule were extraordinary, but the story presented on his death was a sanitised fable. World leaders queued up to subscribe to the cult of wise old Harry, father of the nation.

Lee wasn’t so benevolent when challenged. Opposition politicians were sued for libel and bankrupted for criticising government policies during election campaigns. When the opposition had the temerity to actually win some seats, the state set out to destroy the new MPs financially and professionally, before gerrymandering them out in the following election.

Ironically, for decades Lee’s PDP would have won every election with an overall majority even under pure PR. He was genuinely loved by the majority of Singaporeans, as the scenes at his funeral showed. That made his suppression of minority opinions all the more distasteful. Continue reading →

Posted in Elections, Global | Tagged africa, democracy, elections, nigeria, pacific | Comments Off

Your Guide to Israel’s General Election

Posted on March 15, 2015 by Gerry Lynch

Originally posted at Slugger O’Toole…

Israel goes to the polls on St Patrick’s Day to elect a new parliament, which in turn will either confirm incumbent Binyamin Netanyahu in office or oust him in favour of the centre-left. The St Patrick’s Day connection? If Netanyahu loses, he will be replaced by a man whose father was born in Belfast’s Clifton Park Avenue and whose grandfather was Chief Rabbi of Ireland.

Polls indicate that it will be a close run thing, with 11 lists, many covering multiple parties, likely to win seats and small shifts in votes making particular coalitions possible or impossible.

Israel is a country that everyone has an opinion on but few have a working knowledge of its politics. So, why not be one of the educated few and show off your expertise the next time you’re involved in an argument in the pub about the Middle East? Crash through the [too long:don’t read] barrier with me as I look at what Israelis are voting on, why they’re voting at all, and take a tour d’horizon of the bewilderingly complex Israeli party system. Continue reading →

Posted in Middle East | Tagged democracy, elections, israel | Comments Off

Two Tribes, The Winds of Change and an old man’s death

Posted on March 10, 2015 by Gerry Lynch

Originally posted at Slugger O’Toole…

30 years ago today a man only moderately old died in an élite Moscow hospital; he had smoked incessantly for six of his seven decades and drank heavily for five, and after years of mounting illness, his liver, lungs and heart had all given in. His name was Konstantin Chernenko and he had, for 13 months, been the leader of one of the world’s two superpowers, and he was a gravely ill man for all of that time. Never in history had such a mighty realm had such an anonymous tyrant.

Chernenko’s life started six years before the birth of the world’s first Socialist state and ended seven years before its doom. When he was born as the son of an impoverished miner in smalltown Siberia in what was still the Empire of the Tsars, it would have been unthinkable that he might end up heading up an empire with military might and global reach beyond any Tsar’s wildest imaginings.

For ambitious men from proletarian backgrounds, born in the decades before the First World War, the establishment of Soviet power was a tremendous boon. With the children of the aristocracy and liberal intelligentsia suspect on class grounds, and the peasantry being only slightly less suspect and considerably less educated, the correct proletarian origins provided a lottery ticket to promotion in the expanding middle bureaucracy of the burgeoning Soviet state. Khrushchev and Brezhnev were from similar stock. Young Konstantin joined the Communist Party’s youth wing in 1929 and never looked back, aided by the elimination of countless older and more capable rivals in the madness of the Great Purge and desperation of the Great Patriotic War.

At the time of Chernenko’s appointment in 1984, the USSR seemed to be imperious in its power – secure domestically and in its Eastern European satellites, still glowing in Indo-China after the relatively recent defeat not only of the United States, but the Khmer Rouge and China in succession, and adding new loyal satellites from Afghanistan to Nicaragua. Solidarity had been crushed in Poland. Soviet SS-20s menaced London and Paris – this was the era of Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Two Tribes. Soviet misreading of NATO’s Operation Able Archer exercises in 1983 and shooting down of Korean Air Flight 007 saw the world stare over the edge of a nuclear precipice. Continue reading →

Posted in Global | Comments Off

Lent

Posted on February 18, 2015 by Gerry Lynch

James Tissot, Jesus Tempted in the Wilderness, c. 1890.

What am I giving up for Lent? I’m going to try giving up cynicism and unhappiness.

Cynicism is worn as a badge of maturity in 2010s Britain. To dare to be optimistic, to dare to hope, is a sign of being a tragically naïve mug; and there’s nothing worse in our oh-so-sophisticated-and-worldly culture than being naïve. Actually things can and do get better; wrongs are often righted and the mistreated ultimately vindicated, often when their cause seemed utterly lost. People do choose to be good and kind and selfless, rather than being mean-spirited and grasping, and they do it all the time. The public narrative that everybody is only out for themselves isn’t just wrong, it’s damaging: if we are convinced that we live in a selfish world then we begin to conceive of living kindly and generously as a dangerous act of rebellion rather than the stance that makes us happiest.

I’m going to spend Lent trying to see the best in people, in institutions, and goodness help me in the run up to a General Election, even in politicians. Call me naïve, but I don’t think there’s anything sophisticated in thinking everyone is heartless and shallow and selfish (except of course for deep and meaningful me). It’s actually incredibly juvenile. How come the material and sexual liberation of the past half-century has made us regress into being grown up teenagers? Continue reading →

Posted in Anglicanism, Christianity, Reflection | Tagged anglicanism, christian, christianity, lent, reflections | Comments Off

Flegs and Anthems

Posted on February 15, 2015 by Gerry Lynch

Originally posted on Slugger O’Toole…

I was interested to note the Union Flag carefully positioned immediately beside Belfast PUP Councillor Julie-Anne Corr Johnson for her interview with BBC NI’s The Viewrecently. “On one hand they tell us the British identity of Northern Ireland citizens is under threat”, she thundered, “whilst at the same time denying British citizens like me access to British laws and British rights.” The openly lesbian Corr Johnson was objecting to the DUP campaign for a ‘religious opt-out’ to equality laws for same-sex couples.

It was interesting, because in Northern Ireland flags aren’t usually identified as symbols of equality or human rights. In particular, those most likely to consider the Union Flag an important political symbol have traditionally been those in Northern Ireland least likely to support gay rights; on gay pride marches, neither Union Flags nor Tricolours are to be seen at all. In that context, Corr Johnson’s positioning of herself with the flag was an interesting and clever subversion of the accepted political order. I’m a Unionist and a Loyalist too, Corr Johnson was saying, and actually people like me are the ones committed to actual British values, not the DUP and TUV.

That sort of cultural positioning and visual imagery is common in the United States, where the flag and Constitution seem to outsiders almost to be objects of worship. Over there, claiming a share in the flag is now a core strategy of not just LGBT activists, but minority activists in general. Was it always thus? Continue reading →

Posted in Global, Northern Ireland, South Africa, USA | Comments Off

Gay Life in NI if the Conscience Clause Were Enacted

Posted on February 1, 2015 by Gerry Lynch

Originally posted on Slugger O’Toole…

It was a summer Friday in 2008, and we were in a provincial town West of the Bann. Jordin Sparks was Number 1 and Ian Paisley’s tenure as leader of Our Wee Country had ended a few weeks before. We’d planned a day trip, but we’d ended up exploring a bit further than expected. It was chilly for June, but the showers from earlier had cleared into that gorgeous, soft, summer evening light that is the thing I miss most from home.

Why drive all the way back to Belfast, we thought? Why not check into a B&B for the evening, have a nice meal out, and explore even further the next day? I had just bought my first car. I could drive with L plates as long as he was in the passenger seat. I’d never driven so far before. It was all very exciting.

The local tourist office helpfully supplied some numbers, and the first number we called was very keen to let us a double room, and we were very keen on the price. There was no rush, so we’d be along in a few hours’ time. After a bit more sightseeing and church crawling, we arrived at our lodgings for the evening.

Our hostess was very definitely a West of the Bann Protestant lady of a certain age and social standing. When I said I was the Mr. Lynch who’d booked the double room a few hours before, she looked positively alarmed.

“Now, you asked for a double room”, she says, dispensing with any pleasantries, “but it’s really a twin room you want, isn’t it?”

No, I insist, we really do want the double room we’d booked. Continue reading →

Posted in LGBT, Northern Ireland | Comments Off

CONVERSION EXPERIENCE: A poem for the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul

Posted on January 25, 2015 by Gerry Lynch

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfT-xUV1Nok]

CONVERSION EXPERIENCE

Voice and light that left him blinded,
     Lashed him like a cattle prod.
“That you do for me is evil!
     That you thought the devil, God!”
‘Did I really intrigue murder?’ –
     Pride that led to such a fall!
Sin in haste, shed tears at leisure,
     O such sorrow, poor St. Paul.

North wind gusts from the Cathedral,
     Through the ring road traffic queue.
Thronging crowds for Sunday shopping,
     Those who cross the church door, few.
Why on earth am I so stupid?
     How could this be true at all?
Do I really think the same as
     Stupid bigots like St. Paul?

Poisoned planet filled with violence,
     While we, yawning, watch TV.
Do we really call this ‘progress’,
     As we laud on bended knee
Self-improvement, home improvements,
     Mammon, iPods and the mall.
Blanking out the hungry billion*,
     Who are we to judge St. Paul?

“As you did it for the lowest!”
     Says the maker of the spheres;
“When you let her die, you kill me!”
     Is it that our era fears?
God the execution victim,
     Refugee born in a stall –
Then, like now, it seemed too silly.
     Follow Christ, still, like St Paul.

* According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, 870 million people are chronically undernourished. This is almost exactly the same as the total population of the European Union, the United States, Canada and Australia combined.

Posted in Christianity, Poetry | Tagged apologetics, christian, christianity, conversion of st paul, poem, poetry, st paul | Comments Off

Thoughts on Bishops who won’t Ordain Women

Posted on November 7, 2014 by Gerry Lynch

Today it was announced that Philip North, Vicar of Old St Pancras in London and a prominent member of Traditionalist Anglo-Catholic group Forward in Faith, is to be the new Bishop of Burnley. He is, therefore, someone who will not receive the sacramental ministry of women priests and bishops. Kelvin Holdsworth, the Provost of Glasgow, has objected to Philip’s appointment on social media today. Although Kelvin is someone I have a lot of regard for and agree on a lot of things with, I simply can’t agree with him here.

For what it’s worth, I am and always have been a supporter of the full inclusion of women in the Church’s threefold orders of ministry. It is one of the main reasons why I moved from Roman Catholicism to Anglicanism 17 years ago. I rejoice that I think I can reasonably expect to see a woman as Archbishop of Canterbury well within my working lifetime. More than that, I don’t find remotely convincing either the ecumenical or the ontological arguments on which Traditionalist Anglo-Catholic opposition to women’s ordination rest. But I still don’t agree with Kelvin.

Quite apart from the personal regard in which I hold Philip, there are four significant reasons why. The first and last are specifically related to the current situation in the Church of England, and therefore may not apply so directly to Kelvin’s context. The middle two are, I think, universal. Continue reading →

Posted in Anglicanism, Christianity | Tagged anglo-catholicism | Comments Off

Sexual and Religious Freedoms: the First Casualties of Russian Crimea?

Posted on November 2, 2014 by Gerry Lynch

Rally in Kiev commemorating the deportation of Crimean Tatars in WW2. Will history repeat? (Photo (C) “kaktuse” under Creative Commons 3.0.

The excellent Forum 18 organisation, which supports freedom of religious belief and disbelief in Europe and Asia, reports a recent wave of harrasment of and raids on premises owned by Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses in what is now Russian-controlled Crimea. Officials claim they are merely searching for ‘extremist’ literature and the region’s Prime Minister has announcd a moratorium on searches until 1 January, which so far seems to be holding.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are often singled out for harrassment and even persecution in Russia. Moscow’s relationship with Muslims, however, is more complex and ambiguous. In Crimea, however, the overhwelmingly Muslim Tartar community is the largest ethnic minority in the region, annexed to Russia earlier this year, and one which has been implacably opposed to Moscow rule.

Perhaps the authorities would like to see Crimea’s Tartars follow the region’s gay community in fleeing to Ukraine, and on this subject Prime Minister Aksyonov is considerably less conciliatory than on religious persecution. As Time reports:

“In Crimea we don’t welcome such people, we don’t need them,” he said, referring to homosexuals. If they ever try to stage a pride parade or any other public events, Aksyonov warned that the local police and paramilitary forces would “take three minutes to clarify what [sexual] orientation is right.”

One final aside – if persecution of the [Turkic if not Turkish] Tartars intensifies, might there be repercussions for Moscow:Ankara relations.

Posted in Global, Human Rights, LGBT, Religious Freedom | Tagged crimea, Jehovah's Witnesses, Prime Minister Aksyonov, religious persecution | Comments Off

Our Experience of Secret Church in Salisbury

Posted on October 21, 2014 by Gerry Lynch

This is a bit of a brain dump after the Secret Church event I helped organise in Salisbury last night. If you aren’t interested in the background to our church and our advertising programme, just click down to find out what happened during the service.

In September, some advertising material for Open Doors’ Secret Church campaign came across my desk in work. I was instantly taken with the idea: it gave the opportunity to pray in solidarity with and for persecuted Christians; to raise awareness of extreme persecution, particularly of the ‘forgotten Christians’ of North Korea; and it also looked like a fun and exciting worship event. I consequently gave it a bit of publicity on the Diocesan website, weekly e-Bulletin and monthly Grapevine, but also decided to run an event as the first thing sponsored by our new Mission, Education and Outreach Committee at Sarum St Martin.

St Martin’s is not a very large church, with a usual attendance of around 40 at the main Sunday morning service. It is a traditionalist Anglo-Catholic parish (Resolutions A, B & C), now growing again after the departure to the Ordinariate of the previous incumbent with a sizeable minority of the then congregation on Ash Wednesday 2011. It has been in interregnum since.

Advertising and Attendance

Advertising JPG used on Facebook, correctly sized for the platform.

Advertising jpeg used on Facebook, correctly sized for the platform.

I produced a poster based on one of the image files sent out by Open Doors UK, and put it in a number of church and Christian venues in Salisbury City Centre. I also advertised the service on Facebook and Twitter, with images specifically sized for each platform. Continue reading →

Posted in Anglicanism, Christianity, Prayer and Worship | Comments Off