THE HARDLY, BARELY PRAYABLE

Reading Thomas Friedman’s excellent New York Times columns from Dubai recently, I was struck by his point that for the first time, the countries of the Middle East can no longer simply blame the problems on “the West” but are, or will be, forced to recognise that ISIS, or Daech, is a homegrown monster that calls into question everyone’s understanding of what and who they are and intend to be. And seeing the degeneration of Sunni-Shia relations in the area, I’m reminded of, say, the St Bartholomew’s Massacre of 1572 and the fact that, 400 years after that, my mother still refused to buy meat from our town’s Catholic butcher. We Christians have been there, done that. Yes, torn the other guys limb from limb, cut their throats, decapitated them, drowned them in barrels, the lot. It makes one think about how we got out of that. I suspect it involved three or four successive and in part cumulative factors.

First, strong monarchies and symbolic power. When I first visited Versailles, I found it excessive and vulgar. Only later did I realise the gigantic and brilliant public-relations exercise it had been. Louis XIV accomplished, with Versailles, the astonishing feat of convincing provincial seigneurs, who had real power in the form of private armies, that the number of feet they were allowed to stand from the King’s bed at his morning levée – in other words, symbolic power – was more important to their well-being than being lords of Lorraine.  That began the drain away from murderous mobs run by ambitious warlords.

Second, the Enlightenment. That curious and formless movement toward knowledge in harness with civilised behaviour, that second Renaissance that briefly celebrated balance and harmony and went on to apply thought to emotion, modified faith by making it unreasonable to maim and kill for its sake. In the time, and the world, of Diderot and Voltaire, faith was increasingly what one lived in one’s private relation to God; the Church was where those of faith came together, but society as a whole was supposed to be directed by reasonable and civilised behaviour. This, of course, had a few serious birth-pains involving guillotines and terror, but in the end it proved irresistible because, like democracy, it was the worst conceivable system except for all the alternatives.

Third, the Industrial Revolution. This almost-unimaginable J-curve of social and material change, which is still going on, although for many it intensified their faith (think of the Oxford Movement), made the habits of the Enlightenment – faith as something you might propagate but you did not maim or kill for – not only attractive but essential. It also continued another aspect of the Enlightenment: atheism, the failure of faith when touched by reason, grew apace and from then on faith could no longer ignore it.

So, now. What about now? In large swathes of the world, Christian faith is being threatened by real, physical enemies who still consider faith something worth maiming and killing for. How do we, and should we, react? On a worldly level, Friedman, I think, is right: containment to stop the horror spreading, and amplification to help good developments where they are starting to happen. But what do we do as Christians? Well, in many churches there is an admirable movement to help fellow-believers in that part of the world. But beyond that? Yesterday at a dinner party I heard some devout people’s reaction: No truck with Islam in any form, it’s an evil masquerading as a religion, maybe it was decent once but that was centuries ago, etcetera etcetera.

It made me reflect that in the various churches I have worshipped in since 2001, not once have I heard prayers for those we feel, and often know, to be our enemies. I have heard prayers for the Queen; I have heard prayers for various Presidents and their governments; I have heard many prayers for persecuted Christians everywhere; but I have not heard prayers for the members of ISIS; I have not heard prayers for Vladimir Putin; I have not heard prayers for Boko Haram. Let us ponder this very seriously. And reread Matthew 5:43-48, in the full knowledge that for those in the field that is almost impossibly difficult, but that for us, for us in safety and in prayer, it is probably crucial.