Democracy - an enemy of good economics?

This morning on Radio 4’s today show, there was an interview with American ‘anti-austerity’ economist Paul Krugman. Krugman’s central argument is that recessions are not the time to be balancing the books through cutting public spending; rather, in such times, governments should borrow more to stimulate growth, and once the economy is growing again institute tighter fiscal policies to balance the books. This is nothing new – a restatement of classic Keynesian economics. Given the social failure of Thatcherism and the personal debt crisis of the New Labour era, such a model still holds a great deal of plausibility.

But this poses a problem – what democratic government would ever institute such a policy? One might expect a full ‘Krugman’ cycle to take around 15 years, and both increasing national debt (in light of Greece) and taking the ‘silver lining’ off the boom times are massive electoral risks. Give most democratic countries have executive electoral terms of between 2 and 5 years, governments will calculate that the likelihood of seeing ‘payoff’ before the next round of elections is slim.

Again, the notion that the electoral cycle stifles wise, long-term governance is not a new one, and there are three ways out of such policy conundrums: a) abandon democracy b) move to ‘democracy minus’ (elections ever 10+ years, stronger executive power including fiscal adjustment powers) and c) wait for the zeitgeist of popular opinion to shift to politically permit said policy. Assuming we don’t a) and dismissing b) as an interesting, potentially desirable yet highly unlikely solution, we come to the root core of the problem, namely c).

So what shift in public opinion would allow a government to whole-heartedly enact Krugmanism? Essentially, the desire for a sound national economic condition would have to decisively trump the aspiration of greater and greater consumption. The better off would have to accept that increased incomes in boom times would be taxed progressively, and the less well off would have to accept that in harder times that fixed term ‘new deal’ type jobs would become the norm. The public sector would need to accept that artificial expansion in a recession would demand significant pruning in growth periods.

If these convictions were to arise, then perhaps a majority would vote for Krugmanists over a whole economic cycle. So, as with all matters of importance in democratic society, good economics is fundamentally a battle for hearts and minds. Regardless of one’s assessment of the merit of Krugmanomics, may we all stop worshipping at the altar of greed and heed God’s call to seek responsible economic stewardship. Only then will democracy and good economics flourish together.

The Welcome of Christ (Romans 15:7)

“Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God" (Romans 15:7)

The pressing question of this verse is ‘how has Christ welcomed us’? A brief meditation reveals this verse to be an immense challenge issued to the church, for…

Christ has welcomed us with sincere love as opposed to a cool apathy. Christ has welcomed us with an invitation rather than coercion. Christ has welcomed us with concern, rather than indifference to, our welfare. Christ welcomes us with hard and challenging words rather than an unloving permissiveness. On Earth Christ welcomed unconditionally those of different nationality, race, educational level, social class and wealth than himself. Christ welcomes us at a great cost to himself, embracing a filthy cradle, a manual apprenticeship in an obscure backwater, a band of rough fishermen as his best friends, a cruel crucifixion and a dark tomb in order to secure our everlasting welcome in His, the Father and the Spirit’s presence.

May our welcome of each other be so shaped after Jesus.

Vote 'Yes' for a Newcastle Mayor

On Thursday May 3rd residents of Newcastle City are being asked to vote in a referendum on whether they want a directly elected mayor to run the city’s affairs. Here are 5 reasons why I am voting ‘yes’ and would encourage all in Newcastle to do the same:

1. The revival of the City. Following a century or so of national economies holding sway, the city is re-emerging as the primary economic and cultural unit, largely as a consequence of globalisation. Cities thus need the strong, distinctive, political leadership that a directly elected mayor would provide if they are to stand out as globally distinctive centres of ideas, creativity and wealth. The health of the city depends on such vibrancy.

2. The need for economic leadership. Economic leadership in the North East has been woeful, and the decline of One North East has only exacerbated the constant and uncooperative bickering over meagre regional funds. As the region’s leading city Newcastle needs better than this, and a strong mayoral figure is the best hope for the economic nettle to be grasped and the potential prosperity of the region to be realised.

3. Resist the magnet! There is a giant magnet standing strong in the South East corner of this country. It sucks in a vast amount of the nation’s talent, influence, investment and political attention. It is, of course, London. Yes, lots of people live in London, but 80% of English persons do not. And it is becoming ever more apparent that the centralised nature of the English settlement is not serving the regions well, particularly harming the cities of the Midlands and the North. Resistance to this trend requires alternative centres of influence emerging, and an elected mayor is in a vastly superior position to resist the pull of London than a council leader who is in the throes of the Westminster-saturated main political parties.

4. A chance to end local politicking. Having national political parties compete in municipal elections has not served local governance well. Local government should be about serving the city as effectively as possible, overseen by a council whose concern is entirely for that happen. As it is, there are innumerable political pressures that flow both within the party groupings and between the council chamber and the executive office, that often have very little to do with what’s best for the city as opposed to what is best for particular individuals or mini political cartels. By voting for a directly elected mayor there is a chance to bypass this wasteful and unwholesome politicking by electing an independent mayor whose sole concern is the welfare of the city.

5. Ultimate accountability. Currently, if you think the council is doing a bad job, you can’t vote out the leader (unless you happen to be in the minority whose ward is the ward of the leader). With an elected mayor you would be able to do that. Surely a good thing.

Albums with Truly Outstanding Songs

Recently, while out jogging, I was listening to a particular album which made me ponder the following question – how many albums do I own that have more than one truly outstanding song on them? I’m not talking about albums with lots of good, or even lots of excellent songs on them (for I own many of those), but those with more than one at the true height of sublime songcraftery, the kind of songs that subconsciously you are waiting for even while enjoying the rest of the album. The life-affecting songs, the truly epic. These songs must be serious candidates for a 50 song shortlist to take to a desert island. With the standard bar set suitably high, I undertook a survey of my music collection to see which albums manage to score more than once (greatest hits etc do not count).

The results were interesting. There were a number of my favourite albums on there, but also many which would not feature in my all time top 20 album list. There were a couple which are not even my favourite album by that particular band. Only one band has two albums on the list. More incidentally (or is it?) there is a distinct clustering to the back end of the alphabet. Only one album would commonly be considered ‘worship’ music. Only two albums pre-date the 1990s. Two albums had three songs on them that made the grade. But perhaps most surprisingly, three of my favourite bands – Idlewild, R.E.M. and Blur – did not get a single album onto the list.

So, in alphabetical order by artist, I present the 17 I own albums containing more than one truly outstanding song (songs listed in parentheses):

The Decline of British Sea Power (Fear of drowning, Carrion, Lately) – British Sea Power
Grace (Grace, Hallelujah) – Jeff Buckley
An End has a Start (Smokers outside the hospital doors, The weight of the world) - Editors
Asleep in the Back (Powder blue, Newborn) – Elbow
No Name Face (Hanging by a moment, Simon, Quasimodo) – Lifehouse
This is my Truth, Tell me Yours (The Everlasting, If you tolerate your children will be next) – Manic Street Preachers
(what’s the story?) Morning Glory (Don’t look back in anger, Some might say) – Oasis
OK Computer (Exit music (for a film), Lucky) – Radiohead
The Low Sparked of High Heeled Boys (The low sparked of high heeled boys, Many a mile to freedom) – Traffic
() (untitled 3, untitled 8) – Sigur Ros
Takk (Glossoli, Milano) – Sigur Ros
The Queen is Dead (Cemetry gates, There is a light that never goes out) – The Smiths
Harmonies for the Haunted (Lost in time, On my own) – Stellastarr*
Dog Man Star (The wild ones, New generation) – Suede
Arriving (Your grace is enough, Mighty is the power of the cross) – Chris Tomlin
All that you can’t Leave Behind (Beautiful Day, Walk On) – U2
My Secret is my Silence (I came in from the mountains, Every line of a long moment) – Roddy Woomble

Christian Free Schools Part 2 - Questions Answered

Readers, thank you for your patience in recent weeks - it has been an intense time of ministry at church and activity in home life, hence writing fell to the back burner. But here is part two of my series on Christian free schools. There are only four questions here, that focus on principles rather than practise, but I hope that there is the essence of response to most questions embedded somewhere within these musings. Please feel free to ask me any other questions in the comments section.


Should churches be spending their time establishing free schools when there are so many other core ministries to focus on?
This question is really a question about the doctrine of the local church – what should its activities encompass and exclude? For centuries, the church has seen education as within its remit, under the biblical exhortations of both discipleship (providing an environment for children to develop a Christian mind) and neighbour-love (providing a truly loving educational option to those outside the church as well as within). It also speaks of a mindset that embraces Christ’s Lordship over all rather than over just a delineated ‘spiritual’ field of existence. So while a church can’t offer an effective education ministry without core teaching, fellowship and pastoral ministries in place, free schools should not be considered as a distraction form these things, but as a blossoming of the holistic mission of the local church.

Shouldn’t the state determine how its people are educated?
It has been interesting in the current debate surrounding same-sex ‘marriage’ that the question of ‘who owns marriage?’ is being asked and discussed. This follows a vacuous silence on the issue of the origin of morality and right in UK, the unspoken assumption being that it is the elected assemblies of state governance that author such matters, expressed through law. This is highly disturbing, as by assuming the state has the right to dictate the moral narrative, one hands those in government carte blanche for totalitarianism at the deepest level – the human and the moral. To avoid such a moral fascism, the source of right must be seen to be either God (for the theist) or some higher, universal-human, inherent code of right (for the atheist/humanist), under which governments must be subservient. Thus for a state to assume the right to define marriage is tyranny – it is an institution fundamental to humanity that stands above culture, ethnicity and democratic whim. The same principles apply to education – the state’s involvement in education is to be warmly welcomed where the instruction is shaped by truth and right, but when the state assumes to define what these are we have intellectual (and hence educational) tyranny. Of course, there are a vast array of parental groups with different views on how ‘truth’ and ‘right’ are to be expressed, which is the beauty of Free Schools – those convicted of the need for education to be founded on ‘higher’ (i.e. those beyond human authorship) principles have the freedom to do so. So while state education is to be warmly welcomed, insistence by the state on the right to educate every child in the realm in the way it sees fit rather than respecting parental right is to be fiercely resisted, especially when the education offered has a faulty notion or no notion of transcendent right.

Won’t establishing Christian schools create further social division?
This is a searching question, to which I would make four points. Firstly, social division has roots that are far deeper than the curriculum taught at schools. Thus it is an easy way out of facing wider social problems to point the decisive finger at schools. But this is not to say that certain curriculae don't exacerbate social divisions- witness the varied shades of fundamentalist schools that flourish globally. So the question has to weigh the curriculum itself, thus asking ‘does a Christian-founded education create social division?’, to which the answer is (or at least should be) is no. So, secondly, Christian education is a source of social unity, not division. How so? Primarily because the ethic of Christianity is peace not war, servanthood rather than self-assertion, love not hate, setting humans united under God rather than divided against each other, for social harmony and not discord. The list could continue. There is so much truth in the adage that ‘if you surrender the Fatherhood of God you quickly lose the Brotherhood of Man’, the loss of which inevitably leads to social division. Thus a truly Christian education is the best hope for social unity. Thirdly, Muslim and Sikh groups have accelerated out of the blocks far faster than Christian groups in the Free School stakes, and thus if one takes the view that ‘religious’ schools cause division, then it isn’t the small number of Christian Free schools that should be one’s primary concern. Fourthly, Christian schools are unlikely to receive government approval unless their admission policies include a significant proportion of place-selection to be awarded to non-churched families – in the case of our church’s proposed school that figure is 50%. So the idea that such schools would become church ‘ghettos’ detached from their communities and uninvolved in wider social transformation is a fallacy. In short, Christian schools will largely be founded for the good of all and open to all, not just for a few well connected well-to-do church folk.

Won’t more Christian schools lead to a flight of Christian teachers from LEA-run state schools leading to a further secularising of those institutions?
This is an acute and sensitive question, but one to which again I think the answer is no. How so? Firstly, Free Schools are released from normal recruitment policies of LEA-run schools, meaning that anyone (subject to rigorous checks of course) can be employed as a teacher – they do not need a teaching qualification. So while Christian Free Schools are likely to employ those who share their ethos, this doesn’t automatically mean the source of such teachers are Christians in LEA-schools. Secondly, many teachers I know teach in LEA schools to be ‘salt and light’ and serve their communities, so the idea that they will all run away to free schools is an affront to their dedication and commitment. Thirdly, even if there is some shifting of teachers from LEA to free schools, all the evidence has shown that having a strong centre of Christian education in an area is to the health of all Christians involved in education, regardless of whether they are based within or outside that centre. Having said all that it is vital that churches involved in free schools do not fail in their duty to equip, disciple and encourage teachers in all schools, otherwise the above observations become meaningless in practise.

Cycling - Spring Monument Predictions

Having only followed pro-cycling for around ten months, I’ve decided to publicly embarrass myself with some predictions for the forthcoming ‘Spring Monuments’ (Milan-San Remo; Tour of Flanders; Paris-Roubaix; Liege-Bastogne-Liege). So here goes…

Milan – San Remo: Andre Greipel

Tour of Flanders: Tom Boonen

Paris – Roubaix: Juan Antonio Flecha

Liege – Bastogne – Liege: Philippe Gilbert

Would be happy with 1 out of 4.

A Royal Priesthood (talk transcript)

A transcript of a talk I gave last week, unedited.
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I was reading the local news a couple of weeks ago, and discovered to my alarm that our very own Quayside was invaded by hostile forces! And we’re not talking about contemporary art lovers or stag weekends, but actual soldiers with guns and marines with boats. Fortunately the whole thing was just a military exercise, and apart from worrying a few locals, left no lasting damage to the city. But the exercise was apparently very successful, with the invaders invading, the defenders defending, the medics mediccing and the support staff supporting. In what was designed to be a ‘war simulation zone’, all the players knew their role and acted accordingly.

Contrast their attitudes with those of the four players in this bizarre game of Monopoly. It became apparent very quickly in this game, that the top hat had no ambition beyond going round the board as many times as possible, as quickly as possible. He never stopped to buy anything, but just kept on rolling. Odd as that was, the dog behaved in an even stranger way, rejoicing every time he had to pay tax or a utility bill. Meanwhile the car attempted to keep out of trouble by sitting in jail all game, and the iron spent all his money building hotels on chance and community chest squares. Now to win at Monopoly you have to be a ruthless capitalist, crushing your opponents under your superior material acquisition, but none of these players grasped that – rather the top hat thought he was an athlete, the dog became a convinced communist, the car was a complete coward and the iron was simply a nut case. Unlike the cadets and soldiers in the Quayside exercise, the Monopoly players simply did not understand who they were or what they were meant to be doing.

And those two questions – who are we? and what are meant to be doing? – are vital questions to ask ourselves, both as individual Christians and as the collective body of Christ. If we turn in our bibles to the reading we have just heard, in verse 9 Peter describes the church as ‘a royal priesthood’, a single phrase which gets to heart of what it is to be and to live as Christians. So in the few minutes I have tonight I’d like us to explore the idea of ‘a royal priesthood’ with these two questions – what does it mean to be a royal priesthood? And what does it look like to live as a royal priesthood?

So firstly, what does it mean to be a royal priesthood?

To return briefly to military analogy, the ‘royal’ in the Royal Navy indicates two things – that it is the possession of the Queen, and also that it has been commissioned by the Queen. And the word ‘royal’ operates in the same way in verse 9–we belong to God and we are commissioned by God. But who exactly who belongs to this royal priesthood? Peter makes it clear in verse 10 that it is all those who have received the mercy of God in Jesus Christ. And this is a wonderful thing – for just as the whole world is invited to receive mercy in Christ Jesus, all those who take up that offer become the possession of God and part of this royal priesthood.

So that’s the royal part. What about the priesthood? Priesthood can evoke images of Old Testament Israel, where those descended from Aaron, the Levites, were appointed to offer sacrifices in order to mediate between God and humans. But the book of Hebrews makes it abundantly clear that Jesus has permanently fulfilled the necessity to make atoning sacrifice for human sin, and that faith in Christ is the qualification to access the living God, rather than a visit to an appointed priest. Peter thus can’t be suggesting that the New Testament priesthood is about providing access to God, so what does he have in mind? We get a hint in verse 5 of our reading, where he commands that the royal priesthood offer “spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Christ Jesus”. But what exactly does that mean?

Well, to get a true idea of what the royal priesthood should look like, we have to go back to the Old Testament. But not to Israel’s priesthood. That priesthood operated as it did because the rebellion of Humankind meant that mediation through the sacrifice of blood was necessary to maintain relationship between a just God and a rebellious nation. But Israel’s priesthood was neither the first priesthood nor the model of what God intended priesthood to be. Rather, we need to go back to the creation-order itself. We see in the early chapters of Genesis and indeed throughout the Old Testament, God’s purpose for creating Humans as his image-bearers on Earth was that they would bring God’s rule to bear on Earth and gather the praises of the Earth to God. This is the true priesthood and the pattern of priesthood that we are to follow; indeed it was the design of creation that all humans would be priests, but this calling was surrendered by Humans as one of the consequences of rebellion against God. Wonderfully, the priesthood has now been restored to the church of Christ. So these “acceptable spiritual sacrifices” spoken of by Peter are all of the fruits of the church of Christ seeking once again to fulfil this priestly role of bringing the rule of God to bear on Earth and of gathering the Earth’s praise to God.

So what exactly does this mean for us? And how do we go about fulfilling this call? This brings me to my second question: what does it look like to live as a royal priesthood?

If we begin with our attitudes, the Epistles highlight three virtues that should especially mark the followers of Jesus and so should be distinctives of the royal priesthood. These are “faith, hope and love”, a trio exhorted by Paul in 1 Corinthians, Colossians and 1 Thessalonians. So as a priesthood we must have real faith in the goodness, promises and word of the God we are seeking to serve and praise, otherwise our efforts will at best be half-hearted and at worst a vanity parade. We must hope for the return of our king Jesus, as without hope of a perfect and united New Earth and New Heavens, we will neither have the vision to herald the reign of God nor the motivation to persevere in our priesthood. And we must love, for in commanding us to “love the Lord our God with all of our hearts and to love our neighbour as ourselves”, Jesus has established love rather than military might or philosophical brilliance to be the means by which His people should seek to live and make him known. So faith, hope and love are to be our priestly attitudes.

What about our actions? In short, the priestly call encompasses the whole life of the church, but there are four tasks in particular that scripture presents as central to this call. Firstly, is the task proclamation. If a king is going to be obeyed and worshipped, he must send heralds into the realm to proclaim his kingship. So we must boldly, unashamedly and urgently proclaim to the whole world that Christ Jesus is the King. Secondly, there is the task of humble service. Jesus leaves us in no doubt that the Christian life is one of putting others’ interests first and seeking their good ahead of our own. Indeed this is the practical fruit of the virtue of love, and highlights again that the priesthood is not to bring God’s rule on Earth through arrogance and muscle, but through a willing outpouring of our lives in service for the good of others and the glory of God.


Thirdly is the task to pray. Prayer is the supreme means that God has given us to seek to bring his rule upon Earth. We are appointed as intercessors to the king, and God has so ordered things that the welfare of all creation, its people, its cities and its nations, are dependent on our prayers. This is sobering when we consider the slowness and dispassion that is so often the experience of our prayer life. But let me balance this with an encouragement, in that I’m certain that without the faithful praying of this church over the years, that both our life as a church and the well-being of this city would be in a far worse state than they are. And let us take heart for tonight’s meeting, that by seeking the good of the Earth and the glory of God through our prayers, we are truly being God’s royal priesthood.

These three tasks - proclamation, humble service and prayer - come under the “God to Earth” dimension of priesthood, so what about the “Earth to God” dimension? Well this is where the final task comes into play, namely the task of praise. Praise encompasses all aspects of thankfulness and thanksgiving, and in our passage in verse 9 Peter exhorts the church to “declare the praises of him who brought us out of the darkness and into his glorious light”. In light of His glorious redeeming work, there is no limit on the type or amount of praise that should be rendered to God. Yet scripture does proscribe a special union between praise and music. We see this throughout the Old Testament and supremely in the Psalter, but also in the New Testament – through Paul encouraging both the Ephesian and Colossian churches to sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, and through the inclusion in scripture of early church hymns, such as the ‘Christ the servant’ hymn in Philippians 2. The royal priesthood is thus charged calling every heart to give thanks to the Lord Jesus, singing praise to the Mighty King and leading the whole creation in doing so!

I’d like to conclude by exhorting us not to make the mistake of the Monopoly players, but rather to remember who we are, and what we are called to do. We should rejoice to be part of this amazingly-called royal priesthood and at having the creation-purpose of our humanity restored by the mercy of God. So tonight may we pray with desperate and longing hearts to see God’s Spirit move to transform people’s lives, that he may bring people out of their darkness and that they may bring Him praise. Let us give thanks for the growth he has granted us, but not to be satisfied until every tongue on Tyneside, and indeed throughout all creation, confesses that Jesus Christ is the Lord, to the praise of God the Father.