WHAT ROUGH BEAST

France, where I live, is currently caught up in an extraordinary political crisis: the Yellow Vests. Triggered by the announcement of a sales tax jump on diesel fuel for cars – billed as an ecological move but mainly to help out the budget --, a protest movement went super-viral on Facebook and Twitter, and quickly spilled into the streets. Wearing the yellow safety vests mandatory in French cars, the protesters began blocking roads, motorways, traffic circles and toll-gates; and, as French protests will, it all culminated in monster demos on the Champs Elysées in Paris. Uniquely, though, this movement has no structure and no leaders, and therefore no one the government can talk to. Moreover, its demands are as varied as its makeup: they quickly went beyond fuel prices to anything anyone feels mad about. Lower prices, lower taxes, higher minimum wage, ecology, all the way to the resignation of President Macron. And there is such a general disgust with “politics” that anyone in the movement who proposes actually talking to the government to negotiate something immediately receives death threats. Obviously, the parties of the extreme right and left who would love to co-opt the Yellow Vests are being told to get stuffed. It’s an extraordinary moment of universal rage (75-85% of the French support the movement, at least in the comfortable anonymity of opinion polls) that combines real anguish, especially economic, with nihilism; while the big demos are being briskly and gleefully taken over by the “Black Blocks” and other violent urban-warfare and pillage instigators.

I’ve written this long introduction to set the scene for what really strikes me in the whole affair: the complete silence of the Church and the churches. Christians have for years felt a little uncomfortable about St Paul’s exhortation to treat legitimate government as a gift from God. In Holland during WW II, as the German occupiers put the boot in, the Dutch sarcastically sang the German hymn’s adaptation of the Pauline text: Die Obrigkeit ist Gottes Gabe. And both the Dutch, fighting against Spanish King Philip II’s legitimate but tyrannical rule, and the French, creating their iconic revolution and beheading their elites, have proved that they are not slavishly obedient by nature. However, in a time when smartphones and social networks are threatening to destroy every sort of social cohesion and sending the rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem, there should be no ambiguity at all about a Christian reaction to a nihilist tsunami.

Christ made it clear that his kingship was not “of this world”, and that the radical life he proposed considered social and political change not as a goal but at most as a natural result. He left social and political structures intact, telling his followers to pay Caesar’s taxes and, if they owned slaves, to be good masters. The conversion he envisaged would change individuals, and thus make certain kinds of behavior unthinkable. Meanwhile, almost any form of social structure can be made to work decently if the human beings operating it are filled with the love of God.

This said, though, Churchill was right in saying that democracy was the worst possible form of government with the exception of all the others. In creating modern democratic society, the Enlightenment has played as great a part as Christianity, and the rational safeguards democratic institutions present against wickedness (and sometimes even against stupidity) represent a treasure not lightly to be put at risk. In no way are they perfect: among today’s great challenges are the equitable incorporation of ecological change, the curbing of financial mega-greed, the encouragement of citizen initiatives and volunteer projects, and the management of communication. But in all these areas the Church and the churches ought to be leaders: not by making themselves into yet more NGOs but by insisting on the position of each individual in relation to God. Can you, John X Doe, look the Meshiach who died for love of you in the face and behave as you are behaving, speak as you are speaking and tweet as you are tweeting? He loves you and needs you to help fix this gravely ill dot in the galaxy. He is standing at your door and knocking: are you making too much noise, or reading too many texts, to notice? Or care?  

UNDERDOGS UNDER GOD

            All over the Western world, the Near East, the Middle East, what in Britain is known as South Asia, Australia and elsewhere, there is a marked rise in various forms of populism. I remember asking my father, when I was a teenager, why populism was such a Bad Thing. After all, we believe in democracy, which means rule by the people. So why is finding out what people really think and want, and ruling accordingly, not to be countenanced? And my sainted father (whose intelligence, good sense and limpid explanations I still miss 12 years after his death) patiently explained that people in the mass and their ideas (feelings, usually) in the raw all too easily constitute a mob; and that proper democracy provides the filters of representation and time: elections and the interval between them. It also entrusts the actual responsibility of governing to those who, we hope, are better educated for the task.

            He was right, of course; and yet the problem of populism, and the problems that underlie populism, remain. Most obvious among is the frustration, even the anger, that fuels this current. A French journalist recently showed that in his country this anger, which pushes an increasing number of people to the far-right National Front, aligns with a certain demographic: the “petits Blancs”, the “little white people”: those who have little education, who are in the front line for job loss, who have small and precarious incomes, and who see not just the world but their world changing from year to year. (NB: in other parts of the world, these look different – the “Arab Street”, for example – but their feelings are the same.) They don’t understand the changes and even when they think they understand them they don’t like them. Their children or grandchildren don’t do well in school, but nobody accords them the indulgence and the extra help that (they feel) the children of dark-skinned immigrants get. And when they express these frustrations, the “cultural elite” – not just the politicians, but the intellectuals, academics, and media -- just looks down on them, calls them reactionary or fascist, and basically tells them to shut up. The political Left and Far Left, which used proudly to represent the underdogs, no longer represents them, so they drift off to the Far Right which at least tells them it’s listening and that they aren’t always Wrong.

            What can be done about this? The first thing, from a Christian point of view, is to recognise that they are people, that they are God’s children, that they are hurting, and that they are in need. When we do that, we realise that the next thing is to listen, without impatience and without arrogance. Once we have listened, we can perhaps begin a conversation, since they will have noticed that we don’t look down on them. And in such a conversation, certain points can perhaps be gently raised. Example: almost everyone who dislikes a certain group of people – an ethnic group, a nationality, a social class, a professional group – will make an exception for one or two individuals, or families, from that group that they know personally. That’s a start. Perhaps some volunteers running ultra-cheap and cheerfully friendly courses on specific and practical modern-world problems would help: these already exist, here and there. Priests and ministers can help, by on the one hand showing that the Others are images of our Saviour, who died for them, and on the other hand being extremely firm about certain kinds of behaviour among their congregations. (In the Central African Republic, the Catholic Archbishop and the Imam work together closely, but I haven’t yet heard the former thundering against the murderous militias who call themselves Christians.)

            As for the problems of the economy and job losses, they too may need an approach that allows for some additional values. To cite my father again, his field of interest and research was “the Social Responsibility of Business”. (He was both an economist in a multinational and a university professor.) Nothing could be more topical in this day and age. The business of business is business, true: but as a French thinker wrote recently, perhaps today’s business people should be more involved in politics. Then they could help work out a model of society that manages to maintain well-run corporations without “downsizing” at the drop of a share, and that can create new technologies that do not always end up replacing manpower. That, as the World Council of Churches has long recognised, merits the creation of serious thinking on “Church And Society” which, if goodwill can be created on all sides, could replace the corrosive antagonisms that pollute the air.

            Sometimes the underdogs are not (only) who we think they are, or who the media have selected for the role. And charity, i.e. love, should go where it is needed.

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace;

Where there is hatred, let me bring love;

Where there is offence, let me bring pardon;

Where there is error, let me bring truth;

Where there is doubt, let me bring faith;

Where there is despair, let me bring hope;

Where there is darkness, let me bring light; 
And where there is sadness, let me bring joy.