Graham Brownlee

In August 2016 American footballer Colin Kaepernick first ‘took the knee’; in 2006 Tarana Burke began using the ‘Me Too’ phrase which went viral in 2017 following actress Alyssa Milano’s stand against sexual harassment, in July 2017 an outcry followed the publication of a report showing that two thirds of the highest earners at the BBC were men.

High profile people grab attention and shape an agenda.

These have been important factors in addressing injustice yet at the same time they raise uncomfortable questions about how we highlight issues and fashion positive change.

How do you change things for the better? How important is it for individuals to take a stand? How do you do this if you aren’t famous?

It is great that celebrities and the wealthy make a stand and raise profile (and indeed such people do face difficult moments),  but it is important that injustice is not tolerated at any level of society – top, middle or bottom. But if you are at the bottom few people take note if you take the knee in public, or post a protest on twitter, or when your minimum wage salary is less than your male counterpart. If you are at the bottom of the pile you will usually have complicating factors of lack of money, poor employment, difficult house to compound the challenges.

This is not to criticise the high profile who make a stand, because I know that in most case they are connected with a far-reaching movement. I do recognise that maybe it needs such people to seize the agenda. But it is not to the credit of society that this has become the norm for getting attention. We should remember that for the wealthy and connected their injustices are often offset by access to power and resources not available to the countless people who bear similar burdens at the bottom of the pile.

Here’s another way of change – philanthropy. As Andrew Carnegie, the philanthropist of the 19^th and early 20^th century wrote his aim was “To promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world” and “to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding.” He concluded “he who dies rich dies disgraced.” A pattern mirrored by fellow Scot of the same period Angela Burdett Coutts. This is a heritage followed by those like Bill Gates and J.K. Rowling.

For all its benefits this philanthropy created it is basically about patronage of these few people and their legacy of charitable foundations.

The challenge is to secure universal access and opportunity and to secure accepted norms of justice, to stop help being the luck of those being in the right place and the right time. This is where laws and government come in. This is where widespread movements bringing together those across society are vital. This shows the importance of broad-based collaboration as we recognise the complexities of our challenges but maintain a will for transformation.

A Christian perspective on such matters varies. Some Christians fight shy of any campaigning, while others make it their all. Some follow Christian only action, whilst others seek to find common cause across society.

For Christians, it is helpful to note that God laid down power and privilege to engender the most radical of changes (take a look at Philippians 2). It is also worth noticing that the idea of the Kingdom of God is about a radical new norm, a new encompassing world order now and forever.

It is good to have Kaepernick, Milano and senior female BBC staff taking a lead, it is encouraging to note by organisations like Nike, Holywood institutions and the BBC are taking things on board. We benefit from the Rowlings and Gates of this world. Yet for all their value change is about a deeper, broader and more rooted process.

Graham Brownlee, September 2018

The Forgiveness Project exhibition has concluded at Moortown Baptist Church. It added a dimension to our Easter experience. The stories and pictures were profound and have a deep effect on many.

The words of Jo Berry (daughter of Sir Anthony Berry MP, who was killed in the IRA Brighton bombing) stand out for me. “Now I don’t talk about forgiveness. To say ‘I forgive you’ is almost condescending. It locks you into an ‘us and them’ scenario keeping me right and you wrong. That attitude won’t change anything. But I can experience empathy, and in that moment there is no judgment.” IRA activist Patrick Magee, responsible for Jo’s father’s death, responds – “It’s rare to meet someone as gracious and open as Jo. She’s come a long way in her journey to understanding; in fact, she has come more than half way to meet me.”

We should take care in connecting a theology of forgiveness to these words or linking them to Easter. It seems that forgiveness is at one and the same time and confrontation and a moving forward. To forgive means to name a wrong and a person or institution that needs forgiving. Forgiveness makes a judgment and then seeks to reconcile. Jo Berry sees this and the risk of that act of forgiving setting us apart.

Jo Berry and Patrick Magee are pictured together above.

As a result of this many of us cannot get to the place where we name things and speak forgiveness to another. Rather we show as much love as we can, and we offer acceptance to another. Jo describes that as empathy. This keeps relationship open and is wise and noble but stops short of forgiveness and reconciliation. I honour those of us who practice such empathy, but I recognise that this an ongoing commitment that stops short of forgiveness.

So we discover that forgiveness is a risk. In offering forgiveness, we can make matters worse and lose what we have of a relationship. I believe that this is just such a risk that God was taking in Christ. To meet us more than half way and then confront things that need forgiving in a costly way.

So Christ died! His resurrection showed that this paid off. The cost and possibility of failure was real. It is not that Christ jettisoned acceptance and love, but that Christ chose to add forgiveness to them. In order that God could move beyond empathy to reconciliation.

This is the miraculous hope and truth of Easter. It is dangerous and risky stuff.

In the meantime, many of us travel with acceptance and love on a lifelong journey towards forgiveness. The Easter story tells us that we don’t live in vain. This is a truth and a story for our time. It echoed again as I watched Patrick Kielty’s excellent BBC documentary on Northern Ireland and the Good Friday agreement 20 years on. In it Kielty (right) powerfully explores acceptance, forgiveness and moving on – looking at how difficult and essential these things are. Well worth a watch.

Graham Brownlee, April 2018

Becoming an adult means…. “being responsible… doing what you want… going to clubs… not taking your washing home to your mum etc.etc. When you have kids, at 12 or 13, when you think you know everything, when you get a job, when you start going to college… people live their lives a lot longer before you get married.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/health-42745813/becoming-an-adult-what-it-means-to-you

Recent studies show that adolescence now lasts from age 10 to 24.

There are reasons for this: 
Young people continue in education longer
Parenthood and marriage are being delayed
Because of the degree of change in society and the changes in career patterns young people settle much later into stable patterns of life and work.

This means that very few young people find a settled pattern of work and home life at 18 and are likely to be searching for this through their 20s. Then once you get a job and find a career research says that you are unlikely to follow that for more than 10 years. People are increasingly changing career once or twice, or more in adult life.

There is a developmental lesson in all this – people are still forming their spiritual, social and personal identities well into their 20s. In many way people take on adult roles and responsibilities later.

Then we look at childhood studies tell us that adolescence begins younger too – from the age of 10. If you couple these physiological changes with earlier exposure to social media, we see that children/ young people are socially interconnected and physically changing somewhat younger.

In the light of this maybe we (adults over 40) should change our thinking and practice in the following ways:
We should recognise that the formation of identity happens over a longer period and is not done and dusted by 18.
We should recognise that young people aged 10 – 30 are creative and interconnected people and avoid being frustrated by their slower formation or patronising them as people who just can’t grow up and take responsibility.
We should embrace the multiple changes of career and patterns of work through adult life and enable people to think through the choices, vulnerability and creative opportunities this presents.

In Christian organisations and churches, we should consider the following:
We may reconsider the tight definition of youth work away from working with 11-18s. We should explore work among 14s to 30s.
We should take greater note of the transition period experienced by children between the ages of 10 and 14, which straddles school structures (unless you remember the days of middle schools).
Because of the diversity of young people and the degree of formation and change we should be much more flexible and collaborative with the young people we work with.

Finally, if life in today’s society is much more about ongoing formation, finding space and change then we should relax and not expect all life long commitments and decisions to be signed and sealed before someone reaches 18. We should rightly encourage people to choose their faith direction before 18 but some will not. Some will make a choice and then revisit it later, others will make formative choices later. Both are fine.

The Bible talks in the following way:
11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13: 11 – 13 (NRSV)

Maybe we need a little less of over 40s assumptions and anxiety and a touch for faith, hope and love.
In any case.
Becoming adult – can you put an age on it?

Graham Brownlee, February 2018

Wherever we look, today’s headlines are that there are no beds left in hospitals. This is awful but not surprising news, and of course it comes only a couple of weeks after Christmas, the time we all read and sing of there being no room at the inn.

Back in December I was at a prayer meeting when a young doctor shared the burden and pressure faced in his ward due to bed pressure, staff shortages and the delicate decisions made on referrals and discharging patients.

This week I have heard someone talking of Christians in another city taking on roles to offer support in an A&E ward.

All this not only speaks to me of the excellent work and commitment of NHS staff but also of overburdening pressures.

I don’t want to get into blame and political point scoring, but I do want to cry out that this isn’t right.

We must not tolerate there being no room at the hospital. Now I know there was no room at the inn and that this was a mark of hope in that it spoke of the humility of God in Christ and the overturning, bottom up power of the Kingdom of God. But today we do need voices to be raised, we do need care to be offered and we do need support to be given to all NHS staff as well of course to those who are missing out on the beds. 

Graham Brownlee

January 2018

In Tyneside when I started secondary school I was picked on for being a first year and having a southern accent. Got my head flushed down the toilet on Foggy Friday. Later, I was jumped on for being little and in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was so little it took me until year 9 (3rd year in old money) to get to 5 foot. I was small enough to have the nickname ‘pid’. So, my growth spurt after that was merely something of a late rally. Anyway, in both those cases the perpetrators ‘legged it’ afterwards. For as bullies they weren’t that powerful and needed the make a quick getaway.

I have only been blatantly bullied once. By that I mean aggressively confronted by someone who wasn’t seeking to hide and was unconcerned about being overheard. This was by a local councillor in a town hall corridor. In my work in London and elsewhere, I have friends and colleagues who have experienced similar confrontations.

Now, we have all discussed this with people who say but politicians are basically good people seeking to serve. But that is not a defense, it merely serves as a cover for not dealing with underlying issues. I have many good friends, whom I respect, who are elected politicians, but they should not be above scrutiny.

Now this relates to the #me too movement that is growing and highlighting a real crisis. As a white male, I am not putting my experiences on a par with women and black, minority and ethnic people in our society. They suffer greater, chronic and insidious abuse that needs to be addressed. It is good that people are finding their voice.

My reason for mentioning my experience was to affirm that politics has a problem. The problem is of people in power who believe that they have license, who control the prospects and livelihoods of others, who believe that being elected and having status takes them above normal courtesies and behaviours or even that such aggressive behaviour is the way to get things done. Or it may simply be that they have become accustomed or resigned to this being the way things are around them. I am connecting sexual exploitation with power. It is also the power of patronage and celebrity that has enabled film producers etc. to practice serial exploitation.

Churches are not immune from exploitation at the hands of leaders. So we have a common problem of power.
We have a situation where sexual temptation and exploitation is widespread and needs to be tackled by policies, monitoring and training. We do need mechanisms for protecting people and hearing concerns. But deeper than that we must address power; we must consider who we value, people especially those who serve rather than rule and those who are weaker; we must seek to build different cultures in politics, the arts and in many other spheres of society. This is a matter of values, education and support for all.

I write this after political leaders have met to agree actions and we have learnt of the death of welsh cabinet minister Carl Sargeant. This says to me that immediate headline reactions are being made to calm a crisis and address media attention. But the culture and values are not securely in place.

Whilst high profile leaders can still make ‘shoot from the hip comments’ which betray their values and attitudes we cannot be confident that things have changed. Politics, the arts, faith and other spheres and structures in society matter. So, what do we do? Educate, value the sphere of society more than the people at the top, respect our leaders as servants not patrons. And in the short term, when new practices are drawn up in Westminster, Hollywood and elsewhere check them not by what the authors of policies say but by how those on the receiving end respond. Some once said – the first shall be last and the last first.

Graham Brownlee, November 2017