A Christian Comic has been banned by the police, reports the BBC London news.

I’m telling you this because the story fits rather nicely within the ‘Christianity and cartoons’ remit of my internet column rather then because I have any profound pronouncement to make upon the subject. It’s a tricky one. I know that many prisoners have their lives positively affected by the Christian message whilst in prison, but on the other hand I don’t think Christians need have anything to fear from other people being able to produce comic books with their message either.

I’m going to let “Commander Alf Hitchcock, of the Metropolitan Police, said:” go uncommented upon, but I will mention that you can now ‘Adopt a cop’ on the Christian Police Association website.

Posted by Dave at 6:32 pm on January 3, 2006 and filed under Cartooning, Current events.

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Bloggers were the first to be reporting on the Hemel Hempstead explosion – see the England Project. Richard has other links and there are photos on Flickr.

Thankfully there seem to be few people injured, though whether there will be knock-on environmental and other effects remains to be seen. In Essex there is no sign of any more pollution than normal and people haven’t started panic buying petrol.

The man behind and to the right has been having a bonfire in his garden, but that is all.

Posted by Dave at 5:19 pm on December 11, 2005 and filed under Current events.

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Christian organisations have been keen to make the most of opportunities offered by the forthcoming Narnia film the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (US website / UK website which on my computer does nothing but rotate a door handle).

In the UK Christianity Magazine has produced a comprehensive set of resources for churches, including ’10 Narnia-linked Ideas’, ‘A Christmas Carol Service with a Narnia Theme’ and a list of web resources. Premier also invites you to ‘explore the opportunity‘.

But not everyone is so enthusiastic. I came across an article on ‘Leadership blog’ entitled ‘Marketing Narnia: Is the Church Being Used?‘ which may well have a good point.

In the last couple of days a letter written by CS Lewis in 1959 has been published in which he makes it clear that he would be unhappy with a TV version of the Narnia stories and the implication is that he would therefore have been unhappy about the film. I’m not so sure. If you read the letter I think it is the prospect of a human Aslan in a costume to which he would be so strongly opposed. My own feeling is that could he have seen the special effects that are used these days he might well have approved, a view shared by a number of commenters on TallSkinnyKiwi’s blog.

The aspect which he might have found the most unpalatable, one suspects, is all the associated merchandising. As the Guardian reports in its article ‘CS Lewis feared film would ruin Narnia’:

Disney has signed a string of tie-in deals with companies from Kodak to McDonald’s, and more than 60 licences have been granted to manufacture everything from board games to replica swords.

Update: A few more resources:

ReelIssues from the Bible Society has a worksheet-type thing you can download as a free sample.

I was contacted about a Narnia Wiki here. To quote ‘R’ who told me about it:

We already have a lot of content up there (it’s all free) and the wiki can be edited by anyone. We are trying to create a community where Narnia fans can come and share information. If you can help us get the word out, we could get TONS of people to add their thoughts about Narnia!

I’ve reposted another post I did here so it’s all on one page for those who’ve surfed in via Google and places:

Rejesus has quite a number of articles, for example:

What’s the link between Narnia’s world of fauns, witches and magic, and our world? How did CS Lewis want his books to be read?

The Catholic Enquiry Office have this extensive page as part of their life4seekers site.

There’s also Into the Wardrobe, a C.S. Lewis website. There are many I’m sure, but this is the one recommended by Douglas Gresham, step-son of C. S. Lewis.

Posted by Dave at 12:18 pm on November 30, 2005 and filed under Current events.

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Warning: this post contains the most deeply spiritual points I have made on this blog this week, or perhaps ever.

I’ve done a bit of wandering around the internet reading what bloggers are writing about Priest Idol. It is largely negative, which doesn’t really surprise me. Some samples:

Annie Porthouse:

Shame it puts christians in such a bad light. The american seems pretty clueless as to how to get people to church.

Simon Foulkes (Not to be confused with our Simo) :

Where is the carefully worked out mission plan, where the connections with the community, where the content of the gospel?

In particular the churches methods and the marketing strategy are drawing criticism.

The high church people don’t like it because ‘Church Lite’ hints at losing the mystery of worship.
The evangelicals don’t like it because they haven’t seen enough of the ‘content of the gospel’.
The emerging church people don’t like it because it doesn’t fit in with their incarnational missional paradigms.

But there again, God works in mysterious ways. In fact thinking through the Bible there are quite a number of times where God’s way of doing things is rather surprising and even shocking to the ‘orthodox’ religious people. The Messiah being born in a stable rather than a palace and dying on a cross rather than overthrowing the Romans, and the gospel being for the Gentiles as well as the Jews being examples that came to mind on the way back from the Harvester this evening.

I don’t know exactly what the profound point I’m making here is, apart from the fact that sometimes when something gets lots of Christians up in arms it makes me think that perhaps God has got something to do with it.

The other common thread in many of the various blog posts I’ve read seems to be that people (including me I must add) have also been quite down on the previous vicar, Father David. But like all these things there is another side to the story:

David Nicholson is a very dedicated, kind, spiritual and immensely hard-working priest. He had very successful ministries in Newport Docks and Abertillery, both parishes in places most people avoid, and was well liked and respected by the local community. Yes, he does wear his cassock and biretta at all times, but at least people know who the Vicar is, and that he is not ashamed or frightened of being the Vicar.

Who knows, perhaps an old fashioned vicar who doesn’t like change can still be doing the work of God in his own way.

Posted by Dave at 10:54 pm on November 22, 2005 and filed under Church, Current events.

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2005 Blogged, the book edited by Tim Worstall is on sale in Amazon now and in bookshops like Waterstones tomorrow (Friday 18th). It features the best of British blogging from the past year, and as far as I know features one of our Wibloggers. But which one? I’ll leave you to guess.

If you buy the book (or anything else) via the link below it benefits me a small and slight bit.

Posted by Dave at 6:50 pm on November 17, 2005 and filed under Blogging, Current events.

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Yesterday I said:

But, despite the fact the marketing people brought in to help do seem to have a certain lack of understanding of the Christian message (not their fault)…

I was probably a bit quick to judge Propaganda, the marketing company from the Priest Idol programme. It just goes to show that the people who make the programme show us part of the story, but not necessarily the whole story. I had this response from Nicola, head of writing at Propaganda:

Hi Dave

I can assure you that Propaganda is not without its Christians! Whilst head of writing at Propaganda, I am a regular attendee at Holy Trinity Ripon, where I’m a lay youth leader and run a skater’s drop-in. I was involved in the early brainstorming around this project and can tell you that Propaganda was not only very sensitive to the spriritual dimension of this project, but that Steve, in particular, found the church at Lundwood to have real warmth – which is why he now calls himself an ‘optimistic agnostic’. I hope you continue to enjoy the programme. I’m too shy to watch it yet, because apparently I’m in it! So I’ve taped it.

God bless;
Nicola

Update: Thanks to Nicola for another useful contribution in the comments.

Posted by Dave at 1:49 pm on November 15, 2005 and filed under Church, Current events.

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I’m sure a lot of people will find reasons to be negative about the Channel 4 programme Priest Idol, aired tonight and mentioned here on the Cartoon Blog last week. The programme, as you may remember, features the church of St Mary Magdalene in Lundwood, near Barnsley, which is about to close unless the new Vicar can turn things around.

But, despite the fact the marketing people brought in to help do seem to have a certain lack of understanding of the Christian message (not their fault), and despite the fact that the outgoing Vicar does himself no favours with his negativity I did find the programme really quite inspiring.

All credit to Father James McCaskill, the new priest, who put a lot of energy into getting out into the community and meeting the people. That surely has to be the first step.

But it’s the local comedian who, despite not being a churchgoer, seems to have the most useful advice. To quote the channel 4 page: “It is Toby Foster who, with one small demonstration, shows Father James the difference between a dry sermon and what makes people listen to what you say“. Lets hope Father James can put his storytelling tips into practice. I’m looking forward to episode 2.

My advice to Vicars everywhere: Go and find a local stand up comedian and ask them for some advice on communicating with an audience every week.

Update: See also the next post ‘Response from the Priest Idol marketing company‘.

Update 2: There is an interview with Father James here on Christianity Today.

Update 3: Richard at Connexions has made a few posts on the subect (here and the next three posts), Church Marketing Sucks has posted and I’ve been writing rubbish over in the comments at Yasmin’s blog (down at the time of writing).

Posted by Dave at 9:43 pm on November 14, 2005 and filed under Church, Current events.

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I’m way behind on this, but I only started reading JonnyB’s Private Secret Diary in September and this happened in the sort of June and August kind of time.

Jonny did a protest song campaigning against the closure of the village post office that might happen at some point. The Observer blog’s description was “If the Streets and Billy Bragg collaborated to campaign against Post Office closures (with bunnies)”.

“You can go in there at any times for to cash your giro
They are so nice that they’ll even let you use their biro
The wicked thing about it is its somewhere that you trust
We could even have it open just on Wednesdays if you must
…
Don’t close the Post office
I should mention that it is my intention
to walk there for my pension”

Listen to the song with the video involving rabbits and chimps and sheep and things (1mb)

Other links of interest:
Opening of the Post8 campaign
Download the song as a proper audio mp3 thing (Higher quality – about 4mb I think)
Letter to Jeremy Vine
Closing of the Post8 campaign

Posted by Dave at 10:43 pm on November 8, 2005 and filed under Blogging, Current events.

2 Comments

…and various Anglican goings-on.

You’ll remember that I was a bit mean to Ruth Gledhill last month when she wrote a rather absurd piece stating that the Catholic church doesn’t think some bits of the Bible are true. Well, she’s back, but now with a blog. (That’s the plain version – you can also get to it via the Times website with lots of extra adverts and things).

It does look like it’s going to be quite an interesting blog I have to say. Whether one agrees with all her points of view or not Ms Gledhill does have her finger on the pulse of various Anglican goings-on. Take two stories from today’s entry, ‘Archbishop meets Gene Robinson‘.

One
Archbishop Rowan meets up with contoversial Bishop Gene Robinson for a coffee and a chat and (shock horror) ends the meeting with prayer. The people at the Reform conference get to hear about this and get a bit grumpy, with one saying “I am running out of superlatives to describe the outrage that I feel”. Goodness. That is angry. Too angry perhaps?

Two
Meanwhile another Vicar decides he is going to go against every Anglican rule in the book (and the Windsor report) and fly in an overseas Bishop to conduct a dodgy ordination service in direct disobedience to his own Bishop. The justification being along the lines of “This historic move breaks with church tradition but was supported by a resolution passed by yesterday’s Reform National Conference of evangelical churches.” Well, that’s ok then.

Dear me. Who knows where it’s all going to end.

Posted by Dave at 11:59 pm on November 3, 2005 and filed under Anglican goings-on, Blogging, Church, Current events, Links: bloggers.

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Today I went to London to join in with the Trade Justice lobby of Parliament, the main event of the campaign since the G8 demonstrations in the summer. They are saying 8000 people were there and I can well believe it, although the news has been rather overshadowed by other political events today. The BBC has Anti-poverty protesters lobby MPs, but also What happened to the Make Poverty History campaign?.

It did start to rain quite considerably half way through so all credit to those who made a day of it. I wandered around a bit and took some photos but eventually the weather got the better of me. It was quite impressive though, lots of little groups here and there talking to their MPs and a queue that went all the way through the park alongside the Houses of Parliament and then across the bridge and along the bank on the other side.

Update: Some lobbyists who met their MPs included International Orange, Gadget Vicar and Kerron Cross.

Click here to see a few more of my photos with ‘witty’ captions.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Dave at 12:44 am on November 3, 2005 and filed under Current events, Make Poverty History.

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On Wednesday (2nd November 2005) there is a Mass lobby of Parliament for trade justice in London. I think I am going to go, as the alternative activity I had planned, that of moving two small boxes from one house to another seems unimportant in comparison.

Having said that I am frustrated by the fact that Make Poverty History is now using the “Trade justice – not free trade” slogan which Christian Aid have been using for a while now. I’m a Christian Aid supporter, but I think that slogan is unhelpful. In fact at Greenbelt the Christian Aid guy in a trade justice debate admitted that the slogan is a gross simplification, but claimed that if you’re going to campaign you need simplified slogans*. I tend to disagree, as did most of the Greenbelt crowd who felt rather patronised I think.

As far as I understand it more free trade is exactly what is needed in many cases, the stopping of subsidies to Western farmers being one example. I’m no economist, but even I can see that a ‘one slogan fits all’ approach doesn’t fit here. I think the ‘no free trade’ slogan is just downright distracting and makes enemies of many who want to end poverty as much as Christian Aid / Trade Justice Movement supporters do.

But the ‘Trade justice’ part I’m fully in support of, and so plan to be there on Wednesday.

As a partial aside: For a brief while I was tempted to look into this tool for armchair activists:

“…the machine is able to receive incoming sms messages and speak them out loud through its powerful megaphones, thus allowing the armchair activist to shout out its rants and protests in the comfort of his sitting room.”

Armchair activism. Oh yes.

*I have the precise quote written down. It was very similar to this but I’d need to find the piece of paper to quote it word for word.

Posted by Dave at 12:47 am on November 1, 2005 and filed under Current events, Make Poverty History.

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[Click on the image for the full sized version]

This cartoon relates to the fact that ex-Vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton Sandy Millar is to become a Ugandan Bishop.

I’d like to make it clear that I’m sure Sandy Millar is a very good candidate to be a bishop, and that for churches to send bishops to other parts of the world is marvellous if everybody is happy with the arrangement. But surely if we have things to learn from the Church in Uganda (which I’m sure we do) we’d be best off learning them from someone from Uganda.

Technical note
Just to say that I’m away for a few days and so comments posted to the blog will take a few days to appear as the dial has been tweaked to the ‘moderate’ setting. Please don’t let that stop you commenting though.

Posted by Dave at 7:53 pm on October 24, 2005 and filed under Anglican goings-on, Cartoons, Church, Current events.

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