In opening this month’s blog, I want to say that as we start the run-up to Christmas, there will be no blog next month. I therefore anticipate that the next Blog to drop into your mailboxes – assuming you have signed up to receive blogs by email, will be in January. In the meantime, if there is an issue you would like me to look at, please drop me an email. If you aren’t sure how to contact me, go to the Contact page and fill in the “Required” fields. The “Website” field on that page, is purely for those who are contacting me on behalf of another website.
Christmas is not the unlikely idea of reindeer pulling a sleigh through the sky, so that an obese man in a red costume can jump down chimneys way too small for him, in order to deliver presents somehow undamaged by the journey! Christmas is where we celebrate the birth of our Saviour born to poor parents, who couldn’t afford to pre-book the Travelodge of their day. As Christmas is a busy period in most people’s lives, I didn’t want the extra pressure of filtering the news for an issue to write about, as we approach the end of the year.
At the end of 2023, I wrote a series dealing with the specific passages in Scripture that some people use to justify condemning various parts of the LGBTQ+ community. I touched on this again in August this year, but I am having some tentative thoughts that early in 2026 I will start a series to work through some of the scientific, historical and cultural backgrounds of being LGBTQ+, probably covering parts of what I wrote about in my essay, first started in 2016 — but this time in a shorter form! (That bit.ly link address points to a file on my Google Drive.) Those thoughts have yet to fully gel, so might get revised over the next month or so, so please get in touch, if you have a specific issue you’d like me to look at, and I’ll see what I can do and whether I have something to contribute!
This month I decided to have a look at the issue of the toxicity that seems to be running through our society (and many other western societies as well), at present. We see the rise of populist politics, whether on the left or on the right, where it is far more insidious and dramatic. What lies at the root? Obviously, this is a very subjective issue and probably depends on your background, upbringing, experiences, education, world view, and probably many other factors.
This toxicity may have roots that can be traced back to the fallout of the financial crash of 2008. Since the crash, there has been a lot of economic insecurity and stagnant living standards, and a growing sense of unfairness. In the UK, austerity deepened inequalities and eroded trust in institutions. When large groups feel left behind, socio‑political narratives become more confrontational, and populist messages find fertile ground. Into this situation we have seen a rise in immigration, and a proportionate reduction in house building and availability, so social tensions have steadily risen. (Just to clarify housebuilding has increased since 2010 but it works out at well under half the total of net migration, for each year.)
I also feel that the COVID pandemic has exacerbated the social problems because the government had to spend so much money to get through the crisis that we’ll be paying off our creditors for years. A Parliamentary paper says: “the additional borrowing that the Government has under-taken because of the COVID emergency is in the region of £550 billion — equivalent to around £20,000 for every household in the country.” UK Parliament. We also have the threat of climate change and the extra costs each of us are likely to need to pay to mitigate that, whether it be in terms of solar power on our roofs, electric cars, heat pumps, etc. With climate change, there will be much bigger pressures on immigration, as parts of the world become uninhabitable. Then we have the existential threat coming from Russia, and the need to rapidly increase the country’s defence capability, and the Government don’t seem to have grasped the nettle at all, on that front, having already started to backtrack on climate change. There was no narrative covering that in the recent Budget. And none of the other political parties are providing answers other than a small-minded obsession towards immigration, and the need to cut taxes. How that helps I really can’t see, other than kicking the can down the road for our grandchildren to pay for. It’s like having a credit card bill for £100k and just paying the interest hoping the lump sum gets magicked away! Austerity has been shown to be counter-productive, growth seems to be elusive, so what is the way forward?
We have witnessed the erosion of institutional trust – whether that is government bodies, media, scientific and/or expert organisations. Some of this erosion comes because of financial misconduct and political corruption and failures. In addition, there have been incompetent leaks and gaffs, like the OBR’s publishing of the Budget ahead of time. There have been repeated scandals, several of which came directly out of the COVID pandemic: Partygate, Dominic Cummings visit to Barnard Castle, Michelle Mone and the dodgy PPE contract, and others. As a country we have burned through one Prime Minister after another: David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and there is speculation that Keir Starmer has a limited shelf-life. People expect results to change quickly, but with such serious issues facing us, that is totally unrealistic. Does this mean we will all have to pay even more tax? All of this has polarized our communities.
Sadly, some of this negativity is generated by the very technology that can help us. Social media platforms excel in amplifying outrage; they reward extreme content and fragment public discourse. The algorithms that provide content on the internet for us, look at what we read and watch, and then send us more of the same, reinforcing our biases in a feedback loop (feedback loop – that squeal we hear when a microphone is too close to a speaker and the sound rushes round and round in circles – microphone/speaker, speaker/microphone, etc., getting louder and louder). Alongside this we find that misinformation spreads faster than any corrections. The online anonymity of hiding behind a user identity like “bobcat715989” (no idea if that exists!) instead of a real name, reduces social inhibitions and accountability, making public debate more hostile. This is why I don’t make use of a chat forum on the website, because I don’t have the time to moderate any offensive posts. This toxicity easily spills into offline politics and everyday social relations.
As an LGBTQ+ community we have found the ground shifting, first one way and then another, so that many in the community particularly trans and non-binary feel the need to be continually wary of where they go. Political actors on both extremes often exploit these tensions, framing them as existential conflicts rather than manageable social transitions. As an example, we have seen “For Women Scotland”, with the encouragement of JK Rowling, campaigning for ever more stringent anti-trans legislation and legal interpretations.
Political parties and media outlets increasingly use fear, moral outrage, and negative partisanship to mobilise support – I’m looking at you Daily Mail and Daily Express (along with the red-tops of course), in particular. Everything is written in a “shouty” fashion. When was the last time we ever saw any responsible journalism, or an apology for an error, in those papers. In the days where physical newspaper reading has dropped off a cliff the website model is growing. (Who has a newspaper delivered each day by a paperboy, today?) In the UK, adversarial parliamentary traditions and first-past-the-post elections, encourage combative behaviour rather than consensus-building.
All these forces taken together, create more feedback loops: insecurity fuels mistrust; mistrust fuels polarisation; polarisation fuels further toxicity. How do we break this cycle? I really don’t know, if I’m honest.
However, I am a Christian, so I need to do my little bit, I must turn to the Bible. I cannot control or change anyone but myself. Jesus said that we are the salt of the earth and light of the world, and you don’t need too much of either to make a difference. I’m also reminded of something Nelson Mandela said: “What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.” I am aware that can apply not just positively to Nelson Mandela, but also negatively to the likes of Putin, Trump and Farage, because they too change the lives of others, although negatively. Even more importantly, it counts to the likes of you and me. If we do nothing, the bad actors win.
Following from the House of Bishops Working Group on Human Sexuality Report in 2014, Justin Welby called for “good disagreement” within the Anglican Communion. As I reported last month, that “good disagreement” sadly seems to have been thrown in the bin, with GAFCON splitting from the Anglican Communion and forming its own Global Anglican Communion. For the last few years Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart have been advocating the idea we should “disagree agreeably” on their podcast, where one is a strong Labour party supporter and the other a traditional Conservative party supporter (though recently, Rory distances himself from most current Conservative policies, hence the prefix “traditional”).
I think “good disagreement/disagreeing agreeably” is a good model, because you are listening to the other view, engaging with it, and challenging your own view, before hopefully reaching a consensus, or at least an understanding and respect with your opponent.
As I started this piece, I had just finished listening to the Episode of “The Rest is Politics – Leading”, where James Graham and Jacob Dunne were being interviewed (click the link to find out who they are!) about Restorative Justice. There were a couple of sections that seemed pertinent here.
Rory Stewart: “ … I was also very interested in this question of forgiveness and redemption. If I was looking at the dominant theme of our culture, I think we often seem very unforgiving. If you look at the headline in a newspaper: “So-and-so is evil”. [It’s] often a public figure – could be a politician. They’ve done something absolutely terrible, and there’s a real drive [that] they must be punished. They must be held accountable. There’s very little room for the idea of forgiveness – very little room for saying “that could be me”, [that] this person is going to have a chance to turn that around. They’re gonna be forgiven. I feel we’re a very vengeful, angry culture that wants to find people to go after.”
James Graham: “[Yes,] in the last 10-15 years, and you’ve witnessed this, discourse has changed to being one of competing, and one of winning, and you know, think of all the YouTube [/TikToc] main headlines [where]: “Owning”; “Crushing”; “Destroying” is celebrated. The president of the United States is celebrated for being a bully, for standing on top of people, and winning in that way. There’s very little celebration of compassion and empathy.”
That seems to be a good place for me as a Christian to try to model. To strive to have compassion and empathy, to forgive minor misdemeanours, rather than to cry for someone to lose their job, to be cancelled and treated as toxic, so they can never get another job. They should have the chance to be given a second chance. If they repeat their folly, that seems to me to be different, though in our personal lives Jesus calls us to keep on forgiving.
A little later Rory Stewart says:“Victims. So much of our culture is about victims. We are talking about very specific technical victims, in crime, but we all see ourselves as victims here. We’re victims of austerity, we’re victims of Brexit, we’re victims of Trump, we’re victims of globalisation, we’re victims of capitalism, we’re victims of the class structure, we’re victims of ethnic structures, we’re victims of …. And I wondered what that means for people’s way of looking at the world, and what is [sic] some of the problems of creating a culture of victimhood, because I think in the end, populist politics is about the weaponization of a sense that you are a victim.
It is highly likely that everyone is a victim of something, and we are all likely to be victims of multiple causes: road rage, divorce, broken friendship, scams, missed job promotion, even equipment failure (car, computer, domestic boiler, etc). Probably we have all felt cheated or robbed by someone, even if it wasn’t serious enough to be reported and a crime number allocated. For me, I think we cannot allow ourselves to be defined by our victimhood. From a spiritual point of view, this is what the forces of darkness enjoy and want us to feel, but we need to realise and look for the way to overcome this darkness of toxicity and victimhood.
As I finished this blog Premier Christianity published an Opinion piece by Holly-Anna Petersen, critiquing the values that Nigel Farage’s Reform advocate, and she closed with: “Reform may claim they want to defend Britain as a Christian nation. Yet the opposite is true. People become less Christ-like when they trade hospitality for hostility, solidarity for scapegoating, and love for fear.
When we close our doors to the stranger, we are closing our hearts to our faith. This is the path by which Britain stops being a Christian country.”
When we look at the life of Jesus, yes, he healed people completely. There are even people today who have been healed of terrible, and minor, health issues. However, not many of us have been the instrument of healing to anyone, so we may feel inadequate, but Jesus also talked to people, taught them and encouraged them. This is something we can all do. Zacchaeus, the tax collector, didn’t need to be healed, but he was encouraged to live life differently (Luke 19:1–10). We are not told that any of the Disciples of Jesus were healed of anything, but their lives were turned upside down simply by living with Him (e.g., Matthew 4:18–22; Luke 5:1–11). Nicodemus (John 3; 7:50–52; 19:39–40) was challenged to think differently, as was the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:1–42). We should also mention the unnamed woman caught in adultery (John 8:1–11), how she was given a future, when her life was threatened with immediate death. Did she take her opportunity – we aren’t told, but I hope so.
Giving people hope is every bit as important as healing people, and this is what we are called to do. We are not promised an easy life as Christians, but instead we are told “when you go through hardships…” Life under the Roman Caesars was not easy, and when Barnabus and Paul revisited churches they had started, “21 They preached the gospel in that city and won a large number of disciples. Then they returned to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch, 22 strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith. “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,” they said.” Acts 14:21-22 That was just after Paul had been stoned – to death, as the mob thought, since they dragged him out of the city!
Jesus himself explained that life would not be easy and that some of his disciples would get into a heap of trouble, through no fault of their own (Matthew 10:16-20). But when that happened, we shouldn’t worry about what to say because God’s spirit would be with us to prompt us. Even so that was not likely to be a “Get out of Jail free” card.
In 2 Corinthians 4, Paul writes: “7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 8 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” We can be strong enough to come through the difficulties, and, generally speaking, we are.
Paul writes in Philippians 4 telling us to focus on the positive. He says in verse 8 that “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.” However, you ought to look at that whole section from verses 4-9. I think that far too many people dismiss those verses as being a nice thought, but not really real. However, I’m sure that from your own experience, if you allow yourself to be negative the whole time, it is hard to break out of the cycle. In a sense, advertisers know that these verses ring true, in that the more people that see a product, the greater the chance there is of them buying it. Social media algorithms thrive on it, as I said earlier. People are slow to realise that if we instead focus on the positive, our outlook changes as well – for the positive. The tone of the earlier part of this blog was illustrating a very negative view of the world – do you still feel as gloomy? Interesting …
So, as we wind up, can we take a step back and challenge the negativity we hear. Use real fact-based information, not “I heard about this on YouTube/TikTok”. Double check information designed to make you angry or react. We can’t do much about the Government debt, but we can challenge attitudes, both within government and in the opposition parties as well as amongst our friends and acquaintances. Encourage, empathise, forgive, have compassion, be redemptive, offer hope and praise, listen before talking, show a love to those around you. How does that sound to start with?
Changing Minds 