Sermon on Moses - Hebrews 11:23-29

"By faith Moses’ parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they
saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict. By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward. By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible. By faith he kept the Passover and the application of blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel."

By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned."

Hebrews 11:1-2 “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen” 

We for some weeks now have been working through a list of Old Testament figures taken from the letter to the Hebrews. This chapter begins with the famous words,“now Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”. The list of Old Testament figures we’ve been working through then are chosen as examples of that perspective on faith. They are examples of where people took bold action in the present inspired by looking ahead to the fulfilment of God’s promises in the future, promises whose fulfilment they are would not themselves necessarily live to see. Stepping out in faith, as we often call it. 

Last week’s reading included a good example that Paul Simmonds spoke of. Joseph had a remarkable life and he kept his faith and trust in God through his troubles, great troubles. But the act that Hebrews highlights is Joseph at the end of his life, looking ahead to after his death, giving instructions that when his people left Egypt they should take his body with them. He trusted in God’s promise that he would give the Holy Land to his people, though he would not live to see it. So we need to bear that in mind, when we think about what God is saying about Moses in Hebrews. Hebrews does not start with Moses but with his parents. He was the child of faithful parents. They had faith so they put Moses in a basket in the river, not knowing what would happen but knowing, in faith, that there would be a chance for their child. 

Our faith never stands on its own but relies on those who came before us and those who will come after. Let us share it and build it, we never know what it might mean. Every great man or woman of history whose name we know, was taught or inspired by someone nobody remembers, who gets no credit, but was essential to that great person achieving what they did. You don’t know what you might achieve with God; and you don’t know who you might affect, and then what they might achieve.  

So who was Moses? What did he become? He was in some ways not a very impressive man, like many God chose he was terrified by the idea at first, he begged God to send someone else; he was not an eloquent man, he was so scared of speaking that God had to promise to send Aaron with him. He was someone whose temper sometimes got the best of him. But at the same time he was a man of remarkable courage and a great sense of justice. You can see his courage and sense of justice when he intervened to save a Hebrew being beaten by an Egyptian, but also his temper because he killed the Egyptian. After that he fled Egypt and came to Midian, where he saw a group of women, shepherdesses, being bullied away from a water well by a group of men, and again he wanted to help these women, strangers to him.

Hebrews says Moses could have stayed a Prince in Egypt, he could have wallowed in wealth and earthly pleasures (which does indeed sound nice); but he chose hardship and poverty to be faithful to God and to free his people. So often in the Bible it is not that a man was extraordinarily clever or strong or anything, but that in the end he was willing to take huge risks to stand up and do the right thing, because he had faith in God and his promise. Moses was a man who could stand against the absolute ruler of Egypt, a living god to his people, and command him, saying, God, the true God, has told you, let my people go.

And he did, he freed his people, he freed his people and led them out of Egypt into the desert, trusting that God would lead them to the Promised Land, without knowing how they would possibly get food and water for so many thousands of people, but trusting in God to provide. Later on, he would receive the Law at Mount Sinai, that would guide the Jews in how they must live and worship God; that would prepare the way for Christ by teaching his people that God is Holy, and that though again and again they would fall short, God gave them ways for their sins to be forgiven through sacrifice and prayer. These temporary sacrifices prepared them to understand the one infinite sacrifice that Christ would make to provide an eternal path to free us from our sins. 

The Law gives us the image of the Lamb of God, the sacrificial lamb that would become such a power symbol of who God is in Christ; and the 10 commandments that lie right at the heart and basis of our systems of Law and Justice. In fact, Moses was credited with writing more pages of the Bible than any other writer, the first five books, known to the Jews as the Torah, the Teaching. It is the historical core of the Old Testament, and so the whole Bible. 

Moses has a crucial role in the achievement of the Exodus, the giving of the Law, and the institution of the Passover. And all three are crucial to understanding Biblical faith. Moses’ achievements are still at the heart of Jewish religion and identity today. The annual celebration of the Passover, remembering how through Moses God rescued his people from Egypt, is the most important ritual in the Jewish year. A liturgy carried out around the family table, as Jews have done for three thousand years, with the foods of the Passover story: the lamb and the flat unleavened bread. Flat bread because there was no time for the dough to rise before the Hebrews had to leave their homes and flee from Egypt. 

The Passover is our story as well. The night before he died, Jesus held the last supper with his disciples. This was a Passover meal, where they remembered the Exodus and broke the bread, and ate the lamb and drank the wine. Incredibly, there Jesus took the Passover bread and wine and said, this is my body, this is my blood. He was saying I am God’s salvation, as through Moses God saved his people from slavery in Egypt, so through Jesus, God would save all the world from slavery to sin and death, if we will let him, if we choose to be his people. That is what we remember every time we take Communion, this is what we share: The bread and wine of Passover, the body and blood of Jesus, our Passover lamb.

One thing to note in our reading is how it says Moses “regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasurers of Egypt”. “Disgrace for the sake of Christ”? That might sound strange to us. How did Moses know Christ? We often forget that Hebrews and all the books of the New Testament take for granted that Christ is God and that he was an active presence in the Old Testament, and that the Old Testament Prophets spoke of Christ and believed in him. 

At Christmas time, we read the opening to John’s Gospel ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God, which is of course places Christ Jesus, the Son of God, right there at the start of Genesis on the first page of the Bible. And he’s there in the Exodus according to this reading from Hebrews.  Across the New Testament, particularly in Matthew, in Acts, in Paul’s letters and here in Hebrews, they are saying that the Old Testament speaks of Christ, and Christ was there and known in the Old Testament, in Psalms and Isaiah and everywhere throughout the history of God’s people. This is why you can’t take the Old Testament out of the Bible, because if you did you wouldn’t have a New Testament left. And I don’t just mean that one historically led to the other, I mean that if you removed all the parts of the New Testament that are talking about the Old Testament you would be left with a lot of empty pages. 

The Exodus itself, has always been of special importance to people suffering oppression and slavery. That God heard the cry of the slaves, named them his people and brought them out of slavery to the Promised Land. In particular, it was profoundly important to the black slaves of America. Taken from Africa and introduced to the Bible by their captors, still they found in the story of Moses a promise of freedom that defied the men who held them prisoner, and brought meaning and hope that God was with them. Denied education or freedom to meet and organise, they expressed themselves through music, songs sung in fields and simple homes, shared orally and passed down through generations. After slavery was abolished in America in the 1860s these songs were written down and shared widely. In our hymnbooks they used to be called negro spirituals. And Spiritual they certainly are. And it’s an incredible thing that the story of what Moses did could mean so much, thousands of years later and thousands of miles away, to a people in the face of such suffering. 

Moses is described as special: in both Exodus and Numbers it is said uniquely that God spoke to Moses not in dreams or riddles but face-to-face, face to face. This is the amazing thing about Jesus, everyone who saw him saw God face-to-face. All the Apostles, all the people who followed Jesus, had a relationship with God as special as this one unique person in the whole Old Testament, and through the Holy Spirit within us, we can say the same. We have a faith passed down from the Patriarchs to Moses, preserved by his parents, lived through his courage; that brought his people into the Promised Land, that was and is always looking to Christ, and to this day is inspiring those suffering oppression to strive for a more just and Christ-like world: the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.  I pray we will all embrace that faith. It has done mighty things in the past, and with God, it can do mighty things in the future still.  Amen.

Sermon for King Charles III's Coronation - The Kingdom of Heaven

Mark 4:26-29

Jesus said to them, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground.  Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.  All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head.  As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”

Matthew 13:31-33, 44-46

He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field.  Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”

He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.”

Yesterday we saw the coronation of King Charles III, the first coronation in this country for 70 years,

and today I am speaking to you about the Kingdom of God. We have two different kingdoms before us then: the Kingdom of God, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. How then, do these Kingdoms relate to each other?

The Coronation expresses an ideal of service through historic traditions and ceremonies, that in this country have always been rooted in a Christian, Biblical understanding of service and sacrifice. Our King was crowned in Westminster Abbey, by our own Archbishop, and in the most sacred part of the coronation, the King was anointed with holy oil, made from olives grown on Mt Gethsemane in Jerusalem, the garden where Jesus prayed on the night before he was crucified. This anointing follows a Biblical tradition far older even than Christ, going back to the Prophet Samuel and King Saul over 3000 years ago. 

This reminds both the King and ourselves, that we stand in a line of tradition, an inheritance, that goes back far before us, and will be here long after us. We are part of that inheritance, but it is greater and larger than us, a higher standard by which we will be judged, as servants to other people and to God. Our laws are largely secular, they are not written with God first in mind, though there are thoughtful Christians in all our institutions, from the parish council right up to parliament. 

Our laws are decided democratically, but the people can be wrong: we must ultimately judge these laws by whether they reflect God's law: his will for justice, love and peace; respect for the image of God in other men and women, and respect for God's creation. In governing our society, politicians and others often fall short of those high standards. At times in our history, we have failed as a whole society, whether during the years when Britain was involved in the Slave Trade, or in the tolerance of dreadful poverty in the past and today.

We are residents of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but we are also citizens of the Kingdom of God, which is a greater and higher loyalty. The Bible calls us to obey the laws of whatever land we live in, except where those laws profoundly contradict God's higher law. First, we must campaign and argue against unjust laws, but then sometimes we must make the difficult choice to break those laws, in order to keep faith with God. 

How we do that still matters. In ancient times, Christians peacefully refused to engage in the pagan worship of the Roman Emperors, and they were condemned to death for it. In modern times in America, the Reverend Martin Luther King, a Baptist Christian Minister, led black and white Christians in a peaceful movement of civil disobedience that challenged the profoundly unjust, racist laws of the southern US States. Today, as well, around the world, in unjust countries like China, Iran and Russia, Christians wrestle with their consciences, and brave men and women of God face imprisonment and worse for standing up and putting obedience to God ahead of obedience to the state they live in.

It would perhaps be easy to say that the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world should be kept completely separate. Some Christians lean in this direction, arguing that Christians should have nothing to do with politics; while many atheists insist laws should be entirely secular, with no spiritual input at all. But while the Kingdom of God is not of this world, the Gospels tell us the Kingdom of God is bleeding into this world: soaking it, transforming it, making it a new and better creation; a hope for all mankind, and all nature. This transformation comes through Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, the one and only man truly worthy to be a King, the one and only man in whom we can always place our trust. From the very first Christmas, when God came into this world as a baby, his Kingdom is here and present and growing: from the start of Jesus' ministry in Galilee it explodes outward.

This means there are three different layers of reality that we must distinguish. On the one hand, we have the realities of what power and politics looks like now, in this world, which is often a disappointing affair of hypocrisy, division, hatred and short-sighted greed. Then there is the presence of God in heaven, where God is everything and evil and sin have no hold. In between though, there is a process, a changing reality as the Kingdom of God soaks into this world and transforms it. The Bible makes clear that ultimately, in the end, this world will be transformed entirely: the ugliness and greed of politics will pass away and the Kingdom of God will be all in all, forever and ever. It is God and his Kingdom that is truly real and eternal, while evil and misery is passing away and will be gone. 

We see that completed Kingdom of God now as an ideal, a vision: when we read the Bible, and in moments of worship and liturgy, like the Coronation itself, but it is becoming reality. For now the world falls short of the ideal: in our churches, our politics, our economy, our ordinary life; but day by day, through every small act of love, hospitality and service, through every work of beauty, through every time we stand up for truth; that Kingdom is becoming more real than the shadows cast by sin and evil. On a rainy day, everything looks dark, but eventually the rain stops, the clouds burn away, the sun comes out, and then everything is filled with light. As St Paul said, "for now we see as in a cloudy mirror, but then we shall see face to face". We are already citizens of the Kingdom of God, but this is a Kingdom still under construction here on earth. As our Lord Jesus said, "The Kingdom of God is within you", and every day, inspired by our Lord, and supported by the Holy Spirit, we have the opportunity to build that Kingdom into reality. 

To build God's Kingdom here on earth, we need to understand that Kingdom better. What is it like? What can we learn about it from the parables we heard today? I love these short, simple parables. There is not any complicated story, but each gives us an image and feeling that defines the Kingdom of God. In the parables of the scattered seed, the mustard seed, and the yeast, we have powerful image of life and growth, a set of images for just this time of year, as spring takes hold and new growth is everywhere. The Kingdom is a surging force, that spreads from person to person, that starts with tiny beginnngs and grows and grows in every aspect of life. It spreads throughout people's lives and whole societies like yeast in dough, making it rise and ferment; if we embrace the new opportunities to do good we see around us.

God is a creator first of all. He is the source of all things, the Father who gave life to us all. In his Kingdom, his nature grows into our mundane world in a new and deeper way, through Christ, who brings God and Mankind together. King Charles III inherited his kingdom from his mother Queen Elizabeth, and it is a kingdom defined by borders of land and sea. Christ is a King who creates his Kingdom wherether he goes, by bringing life in all its fullness, inspiring art, music, beauty, community, charitable love and joy.

If growth and life are the image of the first set of this parables, then joy is at the core of the second set. You see this across so many of Jesus' parables, they so often end in a party, or a person rejoicing. Look at the parable of the treasure hidden in a field, or the merchant's pearl. Here is joy, the joy of a sudden, life changing surprise, of finding the thing you've always been looking for.

These are very short parables, but because they are stories about people, they always have an edge to them, this is no saccharine, perfectly safe world. There is uncertainty, there is the risk that we face in all our decisions and chances. The man who finds the treasure doesn't know who else may find it, he doesn't know if the owner of the field will sell, for a while he must take a risk and live with uncertainty, the suspense between making the decision and actually securing the prize. 

The man who bought the field, and the merchant who bought the pearl, had to risk everything they had, to get something greater still. And that kind of risk is both exhilarating and terrifying. I'm sure at some point in your life you will have taken a risk on a job, or a business idea, or moving home, or on Love. I remember when I was planning to ask my wife to go on our first date, or when I was plotting to propose marriage. The fear and excitement were like nothing else, I honestly don't think I've ever felt so alive. And that is what I think Jesus wants us to understand here about the Kingdom of God.

In all these stories, the Kingdom of God is like the ordinary things of this world: a seed, a grain, a tree, a pearl, like the world God has already made, but not just as they are, as they could and should be. C.S.Lewis described heaven this way, as containing every good and beautiful thing the world contains but even more so: the grass is greener, the light is clearer, the air is purer, the food more delicious, the water more refreshing and the laughter is longer and deeper.

This all sounds like a dream. It is a dream, but with two essential additions. First, every great idea starts with a dream, they have to be a dream, before they can be reality. Second, God made all these good things, they already exist. The Sun and water, the seed, the coin, the joy and laughter we have now, these are the deposit, the downpayment, for the more wonderful things God is still doing. And we know he can complete them because he began them. The difference is now God calls us to work with him and through him, alongside Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Look at these parables again: the Kingdom is like yeast that a woman mixes through a lot of flour; a merchant sees a pearl and sells all they own to have it, a man finds treasure in a field. In each case a person is involved and active. We are that woman, that man, that merchant and through God's power, we build his kingdom here on earth.

God's Kingdom is unique, it is not defined by borders and laws, but by every loving heart, every act of faith and hope, every song of worship and prayer, every work of art and beauty. It spreads in the heart, and in each community, as well as in institutions and nations. Its territory is every aspect of life, and every part of the human heart. It can unite people of all nations, races, languages, ages and culture because it includes every good thing God creates. Politics so-often fails to build a better world because it relies on promoting division, hating enemies, appealing to greed, pride, fear, spin and propaganda, so its house is built on sand. Only by transforming our hearts with faith, hope and love can we then transform our institutions and nations on solid foundations.  

God's Kingdom grows in enemy territory without force or violence, every time a man, woman or child chooses to turn to Jesus Christ. Whether in China or Iran or Russia or North Korea, human power can threaten and spy and intimidate, but it cannot prevent people turning in their hearts towards Jesus, the One True King over all. That is why in every dictatorship, from the ancient Romans, to the 20th Century Communists, to the high-tech totalitarianism of today, independent churches focussed on Christ are treated as a threat to the State, because they answer to a higher power and create a community with values that defy the authority around them. At the same time they are never isolated or alone. They are outposts of God's Kingdom in which we are all citizens, united in prayer with millions, even billions of saints in heaven who have gone before us.

But there is a warning: church institutions can also be captured and subverted by nationalism or greed or force. A particularly sad example today is the Russian Orthodox Church: a church with a long and noble history of mystics, monks and saints, and devoted faith over centuries. Today though, the Patriarch of Moscow, its most important Bishop and leader, is a paid lackey of Putin. In the Communist era, the KGB, the Soviet Secret Police, tried to make sure the Church did not cause trouble by having their own men elected as bishops and Patriarchs. The current Patriarch is just such a stooge, a man whose first loyalty is to Vladmir Putin, not Jesus Christ.

This is why the Bible tells us that God's Kingdom is not limited to any one institution or organisation or nation, but is found wherever people are faithful to Jesus, before everything else. In the coronation, King Charles promised to uphold the values of God's Kingdom, in a ceremony influenced by a thousand years of Christian faith in Britain, but that ,eans nothing if he and we do not put it into action. We must love our country, but realise that it too must be changed and transformed. We must love our churches, while realising that they are groups of fallible sinners, still being transformed. We must love ourselves, knowing that God is still working in our hearts to change and inspire us. Let us be forever grateful that God uses fallible human beings like us to do his work and build his enduring Kingdom.

As Christians, let us contribute to our United Kingdom in every positive way we can: supporting our schools, our parish councils, our charities, serving as magistrates, or just voting in elections. But our true loyalty and citizenship lies in the Kingdom of God. That means while we serve this world we are not limited by it. Our faith does not distract us from doing good, but inspires us to go further. We are united across language and nation and class, not by abstract statements of values, or an accident of birth, but by the love we share for our Lord Jesus and one another. Inspired by our Lord, and strengthened by the Holy Spirit, we have a hope that endures, and offers a better way for us as individuals and our whole world. By placing our faith in Jesus Christ we can all be part of building that Kingdom, and I pray we all will.

Sermon on Acts 6:1-7 - The First Deacons are Chosen

From the Becoming Beloved Episcopal community 
https://dsobeloved.org/acts-61-7-the-first-order-of-ministry/

Acts 6:1-7.

"In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. So, the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.”

This proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit; also Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. They presented these men to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them.

So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith."

Today's reading has always been special to me, because it introduces St Stephen, my namesake, into the Bible. Every Boxing Day, after Christmas, I enjoy wishing people a Blessed St Stephen's Day, and take pride in sharing my name with the first Christian martyr: the man who died as Jesus died, only later in this chapter, praying, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them", and so setting an example for all of us who come after. And still today, sadly, Christians around the world face martyrdom: not here in Britain, thankfully, but in Sudan, Somalia, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, China, North Korea, India, Burma, and elsewhere. And we should never forget it. When I hear how Christians in North Korea, or Pakistan, or Somalia, carry on today in the face of the danger they live with, I remember the courage Stephen showed at the end, and I know the same Holy Spirit that was with Stephen is still with Christians today. 

I have sometimes thought, how would I react, if I was threatened with death for my faith, the faith I have lived with for 30 years. I don't know, I really don't know; I don't think anyone can, truly, definitely, unless they ever find themselves in that situation, and I pray we never do. But we certainly will be faced with many smaller, more mundane situations in our day-to-day lives, where it still takes courage to stand up and do what is right. I pray that when faced with these at least, I will pass the test, and so, in my small way, be worthy of those ordinary Saints who face far greater challenges for the name of Jesus Christ, and remain faithful.

Which brings us back to our reading today: it may seem small, mundane, administrative, but it reflects the same courage that the Apostles show throughout the Book of Acts and the life of the early Church. These are people who have seen the Risen Lord Jesus Christ, and because of that, they are not afraid. I strongly believe that courage, the courage to have good principles, and stand by them, is something we must cultivate, and apply, in situations large and small. It's very hard to develop courage, to develop integrity, when you're really challenged, if you don't make it a habit in situations every day.

So, what courage did the Apostles show here? First, we must understand the situation, which isn't as easy as it could be, because the account is so short of detail. When you have a very small group, one already united around a shared cause, consensus is easier, but once that group starts growing, you start to get subgroups form, you start to have problems with communication: and that is when you start to need more structures and organisation. The believers in Christ are just reaching this point. They are still in Jerusalem, they are still almost all Jews at this point, but the community is large and diverse enough that two distinct groups are becoming visible. 

The Hebrew Jews here, would refer to those Jews who lived in the Holy Land itself, like Jesus, maybe from Galilee itself, or elsewhere. They would have come from Jewish majority areas, and lived a life immersed in Jewish religion, culture and assumptions. They would have spoken Aramaic, the common language of the middle east at this time. Hebrew itself had become a language purely of scholarship and religious tradition when Jesus lived, like Latin in medieval Europe. They would also have taken pride in the fact they lived in the Land that God gave their ancestors, a Holy Land indeed, their homeland, the old-country.

The Hellenistic Jews were those Jews whose families had lived out in the Diaspora, the world outside the Holy Land: in Syria, in Egypt, in what is now Turkey, in Greece, and beyond, all areas, at that time, where Greek formed the shared language, and were heavily affected by Greek culture and civilisation, as well as native influences. These Jews would have grown up as a minority surrounded by Gentile culture, and so while still very much Jews and devoted to their religion, inevitably they were more influenced by Greek philosophy and ideas. You see this influence in the New Testament itself, which is written in Greek, and which, particularly in the Gospel of John, displays a fusion of ideas from Greek Philosophy and the Hebrew Old Testament. For these Jews the Holy Land was a distant idea, something they revered, but not somewhere they lived. There are many obvious comparisons to minority communities like British-Indians or Irish-Americans, or many others, who still, of course, retain an attachment to the culture, religion, food, language, of their ancestral homeland. And there are British communities scattered abroad, as well, who remember Old Blighty, particularly in places like France or Spain or Australia.

At this time in Acts, before the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, Hellenistic Jews would still have tried to travel to Jerusalem to the Temple for the major festivals when they could, in a similar way that Muslims today go on pilgrimage to Mecca. And indeed, some having grown up in the Diaspora would move back to the Holy Land permanently, hoping to die and be buried there, which, if you still follow me, is how we find a community of Jews who are Hellenistic Jews, by culture and background and language, but living back in Jerusalem, and becoming part of the community of the very first Christians.

The problem is there was clearly still a cultural divide between Jews of the two different backgrounds, which even the fact they had both come to faith in Christ, had not resolved. This first Christian community is inspirational, but it still faced problems, squabbles, divisions, like we do, because it was made of human beings, like us. And though we must always struggle to do better, to learn, to change, we will not be made perfect until we come before Christ in his Kingdom. That this first Christian community had problems like this is not surprising then, but what is inspirational, what is a lesson for us today, is the courage with which they faced up to it.

When there are problems and divisions in a community, and there will be, it is easy to try to ignore them, to sweep it under the carpet. It is easy to pretend the problems aren't there, and to hope they goes away; after all, who needs another problem. And the problem might go away on its own, sometimes it does. But if we take that route there is a risk that the problem will fester, and worsen, and because of that, people become discouraged and disheartened. They may even drift away. After all, who wants to be part of a community that does not listen to their problems, that does not take their concerns seriously? That's not good in a family, it's not good in a marriage, and it's not good in a community.

It takes courage, just to speak up about a problem. It takes courage to challenge those in positions of authority and leadership, rather than just sitting on an unhappiness, or maybe drifting away without ever speaking out. And it takes courage for leaders to listen, to try to understand rather than just becoming defensive, to give a situation the consideration it deserves, and to respond. It can always be tempting to barrel on with what we already think is important, and so miss the concerns and warnings around us, but if we do that we build our house on sand.

The Apostles are faced by complaints of an unhappiness, an injustice, and they act decisively to solve it. They don't just say, "well, stop doing that then, stop overlooking those widows", they act imaginatively, creatively, to change and adapt their community to solve the problem permanently, and ensure all the people are being served. They prioritise, they don't give up their position of leadership, they don't allow themselves to get distracted from the most important work they have: sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with anyone who will listen, but neither do they hoard power or responsibility. 

They immediately widen the circle of leadership (on a secondary level); they don't even keep the right to select the people who will be placed in charge of this important ministry. No, they trust their community: they empower the people who are unhappy, and the rest of the community as well, to select people to put the situation right. That takes real courage, giving control always does, but it can be very rewarding. If it empowers new ideas and new individuals in a community, it can release a lot of energy. It is how communities grow and develop, and raise up new leaders who then have the chance to excel themselves.

This is also the time to remember the cultural divide that I described earlier, between the Hellenistic and Hebrew Jews. You've got to remember the Twelve Apostles were all, or almost all, Galileans like Jesus. That made them Hebrew Jews, the community who dominated leadership up until now, and who were being complained about, basically. The men picked by the community as Deacons, the first Deacons, all have Greek names: they were probably all Hellenistic Jews, the community complaining they were being treated unfairly. 

It would have been easy for the Twelve Apostles to have taken umbrage on behalf of their sub-community. They could have said that Jesus was a Hebrew Jew, that he appointed Hebrew Jews as Apostles, that the Hellenistic Jews were lucky to even be accepted into their community. But they didn't. They didn't just hand away power and responsibility by accepting other leaders, they didn't just give the choice of those leaders away to the community; they put people of the unhappy, discriminated-against minority, in charge of putting it right. That takes even more courage, and indeed leadership.

When you put trust in more people you give those people the chance to repay that trust, with interest, and Stephen certainly did: his dignity in the face of death, his grace towards his persecutors, was an eloquent testimony to the power of the Holy Spirit that had set him free, and still sets people free today. Trust people in small things and they may go on to great things, as the mustard seed of faith grows into a mighty tree. Of course, these lessons do not only apply to people in formal leadership in churches, but everywhere: at work, at home, at school, in our charities and our community groups. Leadership is not just something for a few people at the top, but something for everyone to show in small ways. If you propose a new idea, if you speak out on behalf of other people who are unhappy, if you take initiative to support even one person who is struggling or being treated unfairly, that is leadership. The people complaining in this passage are anonymous, but being the first person to point out something isn't right, to put your head above the parapet, that takes real leadership, and courage too.    

It takes courage to give away responsibility to others, and it also takes courage to take on responsibility, to put yourself forward, to lead and serve your community. Courage is best rewarded by more courage in response. When people raise a complaint, listen to them fairly, really listen, and consider what they have to say. It doesn't mean you have to agree with them, but you owe them a decent explanation. When existing leaders ask for help, step forward, take responsibility, like Stephen and the other Deacons in our passage today; give whatever you have to give. God gave us all something: some strength, some skill, some energy, and you only know what you're capable of, if you have the courage to reach out and try, to stretch yourself, and risk failing.

The Apostles were faced with a problem in their community, a complaint, an unhappiness. They could have denied it was a problem, they could have been defensive about their identity, they could have prioritised hoarding power, decision-making or responsibility. But they didn't. They dealt with it rapidly, openly, structurally and generously. And in doing so, they unleased the energy of their community to go from strength to strength, to reach more people, and "so the word of God spread". This is a great passage here; I wish I could take it to work, and hold a Bible study with all my layers of managers and bosses, then we might really see some progress. 

I pray we will have the same courage to change and adapt to the new challenges we face as the world, and our community, changes around us more rapidly than ever. I pray we will continue to prioritise reaching people with the word of God, in all the different ways we can imagine; but that we will also ensure we are serving the physical, mundane needs of our community, making sure nobody feels left behind. I pray that we will have the courage to step forward and take responsibility for our community, to offer our gifts of time, money and dedication, and lessen the burden by sharing it around. I pray for all these things through the same Holy Spirit who dwelt in the Apostles, and in Stephen; who dwells in our Brothers and Sisters facing danger around the world today, who will dwell in us if we will just let him; and through our Lord Jesus Christ, who was Lord then and is Lord now, and will share his courage, if you ask him.

Amen.

John 18:33-37 - "My Kingdom is not of this World!"

What is Truth by Nikolai Nikolaevich

John 18:33-37

So Pilate entered the Judgement Hall again and called Jesus and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”

Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?”

Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?”

Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”

Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”

 

This reading gives us one of the most famous moments in the Bible. Jesus stands before Pilate and defines his Kingdom, and so, what is unique about the Christian Faith. It may seem familiar, from repeated exposure, but when we look closely, it is astonishing how it still challenges our politics and our spiritual assumptions. Jesus is on trial for his life, he knows that. We cannot forget the terrible emotion of this moment: Christ's agony in the garden of gethsemane, the profound betrayal by Judas, one of his twelve chosen disciples; Peter panicking and denying Jesus three times by the courtyard fire; Christ standing alone before Pilate. I wonder if each of us can remember moments when it felt like our whole life hung in the balance, though hopefully not as literally, as for Jesus in this moment. But still Jesus remains calm, though he must have been wracked by emotion, he even challenges the mighty Pilate, not to insult or criticise him, but to be clear about what Pilate is asking.

"Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it about me?".

If Pilate speaks for himself he is asking if Jesus is a King by Roman Eyes, a political leader; or if others have said this, then it is the Judean leaders, who would be saying he claims to be God's Messiah. Either way, Jesus does not deny his Kingship, he cannot because he is the King, but he does not affirm it either. That would leave Pilate no choice, given how he understands it, but to have Jesus killed.

There is a very deliberate choice in Jesus' actions during his trial and execution. He will not deny who he is to save himself, but neither will he give his accusers an excuse to kill him. They must make that choice, that an innocent man must die to keep the peace. Little do they know how futile that action is. At the same time, on the cross, Jesus speaks out calling on the Father to forgive those who killed him. No bitterness, or hatred, must spoil or mar this sacrifice, as God himself goes to the Cross on behalf of Mankind.

This death is not the evil deed of a few men, but it is the inevitable result of a world infected by Sin. At the start of the Bible, the book of Genesis describes how Adam & Eve's sin, of taking the fruit, descends rapidly into the terrible crime of Cain murdering Abel. The lesson here is that always the large sins come out of the small ones. Mistrust, dishonesty, self-obsession, greed, thoughtlessness, fear: these combine and in larger doses can prove fatal. At the root of every great evil in the world, we find people infected by these smaller, personal sins. The Love of God shown in Jesus Christ, his challenge to the powers and laws of this world, was an irresistible force that met the immovable object, the world's fear and determination to hold onto its own power.

We should not assume Pilate, or the Jewish leaders were particularly bad people. On the Jewish side, they had terrible responsibilities; on the Roman side, they were just doing their duty. They represent the blindness of bureaucracy, the inertia of a system of government that does not care about one individual, but sees only a problem to be solved by any means available, and is prepared to destroy a person to solve it.

In John chapter 11, the High Priest expresses his fear, that if lots of people turn to Jesus and believe he is a King then the Romans will destroy Jerusalem and the Jewish nation with it. And he's not wrong, that is exactly what the Romans would do. That is what the Romans did do in 70AD, 40 years after Jesus' death and resurrection. But what the Jewish Leaders miss is that they have other options. They don't talk to Jesus to realise he has no wish to politically challenge the Romans. He will lead no army: his challenge is moral, it is spiritual. And that means it can be universal: It applies to Kings and Shepherds, to Queens and little girls, to you and me.

The High Priest uses a remarkable phrase, "Do you not realize that it is better that one man should die for the people, than that the whole nation should perish"? He means that Jesus should be killed, to prevent the risk that the Romans will destroy Jerusalem and the Jewish Nation. And we condemn him for it, but doesn't it sound so much like our own Christian confession? We believe Jesus died for all mankind, rather than we should each suffer for our sins.

So what is the difference? The difference is about choice - Christ chose to give himself as a sacrifice for all mankind. He made clear to the Disciples that he knew what would happen. It is very easy to require other people to makes sacrifices, it is very hard to make sacrifices ourselves. The High Priest was prepared to sacrifice an innocent man to save the nation, Jesus was prepared to sacrifice himself to save mankind.

You might ask, why does that matter? Either way, a man dies. But it matters a great deal, because each of us is responsible for our own choices. Even if Jesus makes no political challenge to Rome, it's probable that the Romans would have killed him eventually, because he was becoming a nuisance. That is just how the Romans did things. But the Jewish leaders did not have to be involved, Pilate did not have to be involved. Sin is everywhere, but we make our own choices, and we can refuse to be part of it, as long as there is breath in our bodies. Each of us can be justly condemned only for our own choices, and that is a relief and a burden, because there are usually more choices than we imagine.

And these choices are important. Again and again, Christ speaks in parables, he answers a question with a question, because he wants to leave us with choices. He does not want to give us a rule to follow like a machine, he wants to give us a challenge to rise to. That requires us to use our own mind and our own heart to take the step and make the right choice. God made us, he knows what we can accomplish but he doesn't want to beat us over the head with it! He wants to encourage us along, like an inspirational teacher or an Olympic trainer, drawing new depths out of their student.

This is what his Kingdom is about. In parable after parable Jesus describes the Kingdom of God, as a mustard seed that grows and provides shade for birds and beasts, as a coin we search the whole house for and celebrate when we find it, as a beautiful treasure worth selling everything we have to buy, as an employer who pays a day's wages even for a single hour of work. The Kingdom of God is about an overflowing of God's grace and creative power that can burn away the evil we are trapped in, if we let go of our fear and need for control and let it. And every flower that blooms, and every beautiful thing we make, and every time the sun shines out from behind a cloud, and every heart we touch, testifies to the Kingdom of God that is growing around us.

It is about honesty, even in the face of dishonesty; about kindness, even in the face of ingratitude; about forgiveness, even for those who do not deserve it. Because these things do not come from our own resources of grace and energy but from God's overflowing resources. And that well has no bottom, it will never run dry. That is why Christ can tell us to "Turn the other cheek, and go the extra mile, and give to the one who asks from you", it's the same reason Christ could go to the Cross in calm and confidence, asking the Father to forgive the people who murdered him. Because the bitterness of this world is limited, but God draws from infinite resources, and pours them out on the world and on us, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the example and sacrifice of Christ.

When Christ says "my Kingdom is not of this World", or when he says "give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, give to God what belongs to God" he is not saying that his Kingdom has no practical impact on this world. Far from it. He is challenging us to realise that God's power is filling and transforming the world, and everything must be reimagined and reshaped by that awesome reality. He is saying God's power operates everywhere, but in a way that is totally different to human law.

We are hopefully used to thinking that we are stewards of God's World. This means we are deputies, we have a responsibility given to us to take care of the World, but remembering always that truly and utterly is belongs to God who created it. I think we should extend this metaphor to own bodies, our own lives as well. And to all the institutions of our World. I recently bought a house and after several months of messing around with lawyers and others it is now my possession, according to all the laws of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and most other countries in the world would accept that ownership. But that is all rubbish! It belongs to God, and in everything I do I must act in light of his ownership and purpose. The same with my money and my body and my time, and my heart.

Christ's Kingdom is a spiritual kingdom: It does not seek to write its own laws, issue its own passports, collect its own taxes, lock up its criminals, fight its wars; it doesn't want to make priests into politicians or judges. Though there have been times when Christians have tried all those things, generally with disastrous results. If it did those things it would inevitably be limited. Maybe it would work, for a while, in one place. But as time changed, and technology changed, as peoples and borders changed, it would become out-of-date and corrupt and destructive.

Different times and places, and peoples and cultures, and levels of technology will have different laws and customs and forms of politics, that suit them. But the Kingdom of God overshadows them all. Christ does not seek to dictate a law and a constitution, because such things are temporary, but God is eternal. Rather in every circumstance, we must fill our political and social institutions with the meaning that comes from God, by making sure in every choice we are working his purposes out, year by year: his purposes of creation and forgiveness and generosity. His Kingdom is a kingdom of the heart, and it is just as relevant whether you live in a Monarchy or a Republic, whatever party you vote for, whatever government you live under.

Because Christ's Kingdom is a spiritual kingdom it is universal, it is relevant to people of every time and place and culture, because it speaks to what is most fundamental about being human, our relationship to the God who created us; not only us, but the whole Universe around us. Because God's kingdom is spiritual it can exist in one loving heart, even where nobody else recognises its authority. It can grow in every family who believe, in every act of love, in every faithful heart; and it can grow until it transforms communities and nations and the whole world. Because Christ's Kingdom is Spiritual, Christ is always its King, the only person who deserves to be a King.

No other King knows you as an individual and now teaches and encourages you; No other King has gone ahead of you to sacrifice and death, and now calls you home. No other Kingdom includes people of every tribe and nation, every country and culture, united by the same hope and faith and love, by their same individual relationship with that King. No other Kingdom exists without walls or borders, but invites everyone in; No other Kingdom has endured for two thousand years, and will endure until "there is no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away". Because this Kingdom is not of this world, it can transform this whole world, and unite all mankind. Politics cannot save us, because it cannot transform the heart. But the Kingdom of God transforms the heart, and the whole world into the bargain.

Amen.

The Critic - A Certain Modesty for Numbers Men

In The Critic magazine again, this time writing about Expertise in Difficult Times.

The response to Brexit and Covid-19 both hinge in different ways on how we relate to experts and expertise.

When do we just have to trust the experts? And when should we use our own judgement?

There's a real difference between questions of hard, material sciences and the social and political responses to policy and leadership: Materials have the decency to follow consistent laws; People can be shaped, inspired and lead, or not.

As the modern world gets more complex more crises will hinge on expertise. We need to get better at realising what questions have black and white scientific answers, and which depend on assumptions, judgements and political leadership.

Article Below.
https://thecritic.co.uk/a-certain-modesty-for-numbers-men/

The Critic - Towards a Social Neo-Conservatism

I have another article published online with The Critic Magazine, arguing that a Modern Social Neo-Conservatism is a coherent idea, and doesn't mean going back to the 1950s.

Relative political positions (Lib vs Con) change all the time. A modern Social Conservatism should mean policies that encourage and support commitment to families and communities, within the liberal freedoms that exist in law.

I'm hoping to get a number of further articles published exploring what a modern Socially Conservative platform would look like on issues ranging from Immigration, to Architecture, to Family Policy. So watch this space.

The current article is below:
https://thecritic.co.uk/our-ideology-in-the-north/

Why is Max Scheler's 'Value Ethics' better than all the others?

When you say you've done a PhD there are only two responses. Some people change the subject, and the rest ask what your PhD was about. Once you're past that, they usually ask why? Sometimes what you're doing is obviously sexy, like curing Cancer, or inventing solar panels, but usually it's a trickier question. Well, my PhD was in Philosophy, more specifically in Ethics, and most specifically the remarkable Theory of Ethics of Max Scheler (1874-1928). That answers the first question, but what about the second. Why did I do it? And was it worth doing?

Ethics is all around us all the time. Questions of what is valuable and important are a constant issue in our personal lives, our professional lives, and our politics. It never stops and it's part of all the arguments that plague our society. Despite this few people consider what basic ethical principles and theories should guide these constant decisions. We would consider it crazy if people constructed buildings without reference to physics, or grew food without thinking about biology, or manufactured materials without chemistry. But there is no comparable reliance on ethical theory: it isn't taught rigorously in schools, and is barely discussed even by those professionally engaged in areas like Politics.

Now one of the reasons for this is the confused, disjointed state of theoretical ethics itself. Every physicist agrees on Newton's laws but in Ethics there are multiple fundamental theories about what defines the 'Good' and 'Evil', each of which contradicts the other. Deontology, Utilitarianism, and Virtue Ethics, are roughly the main schools of thought: focused on fixed moral principles, outcomes of actions, and personal virtues, respectively; Or in other words: means, ends, and virtues. Each of these has many subdivisions and adjusted theories, and the details and issues with them fill libraries, but the basic problem with each is that they are infuriatingly partial.

None are just rubbish, but each grabs hold of an important ethical principle and clings to it like it's the only valuable thing in the world. They then judge our complex experience of things as meaningful and valuable by that singular principle, not the other way round, discarding bits of experience that don't fit like someone chopping off their toes to fit into their shoes. This inevitably results in absurd consequences eventually. Classic Kantian deontology famously opposes telling a lie to save someone's life from a murderer, classic Utilitarianism suggests torturing a totally innocent person forever would be morally correct if enough people enjoyed it enough. These are just simple examples, but the problems with these theories in many areas run deep.

That's why there are multiple such theories, because each leaves a big part of the ethical territory un-colonised, leaving a space then inevitably filled by another theory that intuitively focuses on that vacant ground. What is needed is a theory that tries to accurately describes the whole range of our experience of meaning and value and builds itself around that, rather than insisting experience should fit the straitjacket of a simplistic theory.

This is what Scheler's Ethics does so well. Its depth lies in its attention to the broadest possible range of our ethical experience: of events, of intentions, of objects, of actions, of people; and distinguishing, describing, and analysing as many of the different Values involved as possible. Phenomenology, the method Scheler's uses, prioritises analysis, in the sense of breaking experience down to identify the nuances of values that defines our ethical life, and trying to describe them as accurately as possible, before then asking how they fit together. Where other theories are rationalistic: taking one principle of what can be morally good and then trying to force experience to fit that; Scheler's approach is empirical: It approaches ethical experiences and asks, what do we experience, and how do we experience it? We can then apply this understanding in practical cases where these values arise and must be weighed against each other.  

The idea of 'Values' is the primary building block of Scheler's ethics, described in his greatest work--Formalism in Ethics and Material Ethics of Values. This covers all our concepts that primarily describe a type of positive or negative worth. Scheler's analysis includes an incredible, complex, multi-dimensional range of Values we experience: contingent values of the useful, values of comfort and agreeable sensory experiences; values of life, health and vitality; values of the mind, of truth, personal moral goodness and artistic beauty; of intellectual discovery, justice; and religion, holiness and the meaning and purpose of life. By sticking as closely to experience as possible we minimise the risk of ethical theory wandering off into the absurd. Ethics can never be a science, its material is not physical after all, but this approach is far closer to the scientific (and a science like Botany at that) than the overly rationalistic alternatives that risk being carried away with their own ideas. Scheler's theory is defined both by the breadth of values it considers and its detail. An ethical situation may involve many values, and the more we distinguish and understand, the more rigorously we understand that situation.  

Scheler approaches the question of how we experience and discover ethical values with a commendable neutrality as well. His theory is true to the reality that we are all capable of ethical awareness, understanding and discovery outside any rational argumentation. New ethical insights are not discovered by abstract reason, or philosophical research, but by flashes of insight profoundly felt by people as they discover some new value of persons, objects or acts. 

He argues that philosophy has displayed a rationalistic bias and so misses the fact that the experience of value, which is the basis of ethics, occurs through both reason and feeling. It is through value feeling that we discover ethical worth of all different types: whether the beauty of objects, or the importance of health and joy, or the wonder of a scientific discovery, or the life-changing impact of a child's birth. We do not discover values just through emotion, but different diverse forms of feeling structured by reason, in the same way that our knowledge of objects is based on experiences of the senses shaped and categorised by reason. Scheler correctly recognises that acts of feeling and will are the eyes of the heart, and this opens up new answers to questions about how we can have ethical knowledge, and how ethical insight can also motivate and affect us.

One of the most attractive features of Scheleran ethics is how it does justice to both the objectivity and pluralism of ethics. Within the full, ordered universe of values and nuances of values, different individuals and societies have discovered different portions of the whole, and hence have different, consistent moral rules that reflect the values they have experienced and prioritised. These moral laws can vary considerably but all reflect the underlying insight into values achieved by those people. And then historical moments of ethical advance happen when a minority of individuals, or just one prophet, achieve a new glimpse into values that go beyond those already understood by their society. But this is not a proof of relativism but a testimony to the sheer scale of the universe of values, which always offers more to discover.

This pluralism is not just a matter of moral shortcoming either. It is an essential, positive feature of the diversity of gifts in individuals and whole cultures, which give them unique, profound access to different forms of beauty, or art, music, courage, compassion, and other values. We each peer into the wider universe of values from a different vantage point, with subtly different eyes, and we need each other to reveal the fullness of values. No individual can entirely replace the insight of another, no culture is fully replaceable with another, as shown by the unique pieces of beauty they create. It is only together, with the contribution of all peoples and cultures, that we can build a true symphony of values and gain the greatest and most complete view into the Good we have the potential to achieve. The objective demand of ethics is fundamental to our striving for a better world. The diversity of value and cultures is an equally fundamental fact of experience. Scheler shows there is no need to abandon either of these for relativism or a mono-cultural absolutism that condemns without understanding any ethical vision different to our own.

Scheler's theory explains how there can be such divergence between the goodness of a person and their seeming knowledge of ethics. Of course it is possible to teach people to be better, and to encourage goodness, but fundamentally it is people's native inclination towards love, kindness and other positive values, the clarity of moral vision that their capacity for feeling gives them, that predominately defines their goodness. All the study of Ethics in the world cannot give goodness if they don't experience and feel values for themselves. Indeed it is more likely to lead one astray, like a scientist theorising without all the evidence before them. The relation between goodness and ethics is like that between seeing and optics, or running and the science of sport.

This investigation into the breadth of ethical experience also gives insight into the relation between morality, and ethics, and other, wider, important elements of value experience. By morality we commonly means something like how we act towards other persons. But this is intensely related to other experiences of value of a qualitatively different type: questions of aesthetics, art and beauty; of religion, holiness and the meaning and purpose of life; and the more mundane issues of human comfort, enjoyment, and prosperity. By putting these into the context of each other Scheler gives a clearer view of their defining features, their differences and similarities, both in the values themselves and how we access them; and so offers a framework to coherently consider how all these areas relate to each other. 

Values are multi-dimensional, rationally ordered and complex, and so people are as well, hence, they can be good in many ways and bad in many ways, something that so often confuses us in politics and personal life. Individuals, cultures, states, political movements, and religions can all be analysed and contrasted in terms of the values they acknowledge and prioritise. This perspective is increasingly relevant in recent years as we become more and more aware of how many of the deep political divides we face reflect not just technical disputes about effective means, but fundamental differences in values. 

I could go on and on. In philosophical terms, Scheler's phenomenological theory covers meta-ethics and epistemology, as well as frameworks for normative and applied ethics. In layperson's terms it offers fresh perspectives on everything from integrating the values of natural and artistic beauty and religion into an ethical whole, to doing justice to how animals, babies, things, and adults all have and experience different types of values. For example, the sense you get that your dog inspires you, and your dog appreciates you is correct, because your dog can emotionally and rationally experience agreeable sensory values of comfort, etc, and vital values of health, energy, loyalty to pack and joy at running in the air. Your dog experiences The Good, and at that level your dog is good.

But to return to my starting point, the richness and neutrality of description Scheler uses gives the potential to construct an over-arching theory of Values covering the territory of multiple current Ethical theories, while understanding and including the insight of each of them in a greater whole. This offers new answers to previously insoluble paradoxes, both issues that neither deontology, utilitarianism, nor virtue theory can answer, and questions which they answer in equally plausible but opposite ways. There is no need to mutilate our ethical experience to fit it into some prearranged theory. Rather it is by paying analytical, descriptive attention to the breadth and range of human value experience that we can answer these questions. Then we may have an ethical theory that includes all our experienced values on consistent principles, and so can weigh them, and usefully apply them to the practical problems we face: in business, in politics, our personal lives, and so many other areas.

This is only a brief introduction to the remarkable fruit of Scheler's theory. If you're interested in reading more take a look at my academia.edu page, which includes a more detailed chapter length introduction to Scheler's Metaethics and Epistemology, or my PhD Thesis which relates Scheler's Ethics do developments in philosophy since, including its relation to Emmanuel Levinas' phenomenological ethics. It also has Guides to some of Scheler's major works.

Christian Today - Opposite-sex civil partnerships are a Bad idea

The news site Christian Today has kindly published an article by me on why Theresa May's plan to introduce opposite-sex civil partnerships is a bad, unnecessary idea.

Read the whole argument here:
Opposite-sex civil partnerships: Divisive, pointless and an all-round bad idea

Basically, the commitment in marriage is a good thing. And we can't encourage more stable relationships by watering down the idea of commitment involved in marriage and by dividing a common institution in half. Also there is no other example of parallel, identical legal institutions that do the same thing. The government should be promoting marriage, and helping people be prepared for stable, long-lasting marriages not undermining it. 

How many did Communism kill? — 65-70 million people.

This article aims to calculate the total numbers of victims murdered by Communist regimes and movements from 1917 to the present day. It tries to give a comprehensive figure by listing all the specific Communist atrocities that can be identified and adding up the total of victims. This is obviously a question that has been covered before, the canonical work being The Black Book of Communism (The Black Book) published in France in 1997. On the other hand, that book is 700 pages long, so this article tries to summarise the same question in a couple of pages. At the same time it breaks the total figure down as far as reasonably possible, rather than giving one single hand-waving figure. Summing reliable historical estimates for smaller specific crimes hopefully increases the accuracy of the final total.   

Calculating the total victims of Communist governments and movements is a complicated business, more so than calculating the victims of Nazism. While Nazism killed in vast numbers from 1939-45 in a relatively contained part of the world, Communism's crimes have been far more spread out: in time, over a century from 1917 to the present day; and in geography, from Berlin to Korea (to Peru). And while the Second World War is possibly history's most studied episode, Communist atrocities have never received the same attention.

This means we can say with confidence that Nazism had about 30 million victims, of which around 6 million were Jews killed in the Holocaust. But how many victims has Communism had in 100 years? And why should we care? And is it even fair to talk about a single total of victims of Communism?

The individual crimes listed below amount to some 65-70 million victims over 100 years, and though presented rather drily below (for reasons of space) the story they represent is breathtaking. Lenin's Bolsheviks begin the cycle in the Moscow and St Petersburg of 1917 with War, mass shooting, repression and imprisonment by secret police, resulting in a devastating famine caused by their destructive anti-market agricultural policies, altogether leaving five million dead. Following a lull in the late 20's Stalin launches the cycle again on a much larger scale, killing ten to fifteen million through the 1930s and 40s; by dekulakisation, purges, the Gulag, another round of famine, and the largest War in human history. However this time also achieving an expansion of Communist power to eastern Europe, where hopes of democracy and freedom are swiftly and brutally crushed.

Then the poison flows into a China and Korea weakened by a decade of war, on a new and even vaster human stage. The murder of millions and imprisonment of tens of millions in war and 'peace' from the late 40s through to the 70s is punctuated - like night follows day - by the largest and most terrible famine yet - 'The Great Leap Forward', which alone claims some thirty million lives. The third wave in the 60s and 70s, sees Communism spilling over into smaller countries: Vietnam, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, with more than a million dead in each, due to the same brutal methods - mass murder and imprisonment, persistent war and then famine. Smaller Communist revolutions and movements are barely noticeable against the totals of slaughter, but in Cuba, Peru, India, and elsewhere, they still ruin tens of thousands of lives.

Finally in the 1980s the tide begins to retreat as the Soviet and Chinese zones move away from lethal Communist 'economics' and more overt political repression. But still into the 21st Century nominal Communist regimes hang on throughout Asia, ruining lives. Russia, after a brief window of democracy that sadly coincided with a deep post-Soviet recession, has also slid back into dictatorship, now backed by gangster capitalism and nationalism, as in China, rather than Marxist philosophy and state-planning. But Communist regimes still kill, as the hundreds of thousands of Fulan Gong, and very recently, Uigher Muslims, have discovered.

In this article I take a conservative methodology, in every instance hedging my bets in the middle of respectable historical estimates for numbers of victims. My figure can be compared to the 95 million victims suggested by The Black Book, which is at the top end of reasonable, scholarly estimates. I have not seen any thorough historical totals that come to less than 60 million, or over 100 million. This difference is not just a matter of history but one of moral judgement; not just which wars, famines and murders happened, but which were crimes, and which were the responsibility of Communist aggression.

We should care about this because it is not some dry statistical exercise, but a large part of the history of the 20th Century and the modern world. Of the three great wars that shaped the 20th Century, Communism was born from the chaos of the 1st World War, and defined the 2nd World War and the Cold War. Far more importantly, the reality is that 65 million is not just a 'big number', it is 65 million individual lives destroyed; 65 million fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, husbands, wives, children, loved ones. These people are shrouded in silence, invisible, disappeared, unless we remember them. I hope this article prompts you to read more about the individual crimes listed. And although here I focus on the dead, the dead are only the beginning. Consistently, in country after country, records show that for every person killed three or more were imprisoned, tortured, beaten, or devastated by the loss of dear husband or wife, or family member.

But is it reasonable to calculate a single total of victims of Communism as a phenomenon? I believe so. Yes, Communist regimes covered different countries over 100 years, some of which were even occasionally hostile to each other. But there is a direct and clear line of historical cause and effect from the original Bolsheveik revolution in Russia to each of the Communist regimes that followed it. These subsequent regimes were all created due to direct support from existing Communist states. Each overwhelmingly received military, political, and economic support, and trade, only from other Communist states. And each explicitly declared loyalty to Marxism-Leninism and the 'principles' of the October revolution. Again and again, each instituted a political programme that sought to directly emulate Bolsheveik Russia - one party rule, repression of class enemies, mass nationalisation, militarism, collectivism of agriculture.

One of the key criticisms made of The Black Book was that one could collect a similar book of the crimes of 'Capitalism' or 'Colonialism', to which I say, feel free. But the links between the examples of those phenomena are much weaker and vaguer than the real links: historical, political and ideological, between Communist states, which allows us to talk of a 'Communist' phenomenon as a single entity, if a multi-headed, multi-generational one.

The other major criticism concerns who has been counted as victims. The victims counted below fall roughly into three groups - victims of murder, famine and war, where murder means either direct shooting, or death due to deliberate mistreatment during deportation or in concentration camps. Critics of this kind of approach (used in The Black Book and elsewhere) have claimed in response they could count every person who died 'due to' poverty, or a lack of universal healthcare, or industrial accident, in a capitalist country, and come to an even greater, ghastly total of victims. But this is a false comparison. Communist countries suffered ordinary deaths due to industrial accident, pollution, poor healthcare, etc, as well. Those deaths are not the deaths counted here.

Those counted as murdered are those shot out of hand by Communist regimes, or those who died in scurvy concentration camps, or while being deported thousands of miles in horrific conditions to such places. Those counted as victims of War are not just all the casualties of wars in which Communists were involved, but specifically the casualties of wars caused by Communist aggression. These famine victims are counted because the famines they died in were directly caused by ideological Communist policies of state control and mass collectivisation that devastated farming. These famines were then made worse by the cynical paranoia that labelled any criticism as treason, and any warning of failure as sabotage, and responded with military repression aimed at crushing fictional class enemies and saboteurs. Any similar situations in capitalist countries should be rightly blamed on the governments there too.

This is a matter of historical and moral judgement, particularly in a few instances where I place only a proportion of the victims of a war or crime in the Communist tally. For example, in some wars mentioned I have only included casualties inflicted by the Communists, and not those killed by reckless action of the other side. The most controversial such case would be placing the blame on Stalin for 3 million of the Soviet casualties of the Second World War. I discuss the reasons for this special case in another article linked here.

I have labelled and dated every crime referred to below, and using these labels you can find more information and the sources for these estimates in online encyclopedias, The Black Book itself, and other articles online about the specific crimes. This article contains no original research, it seeks to catalogue a conservative, consensual historic view of the incidents and death tolls listed. I apologise for not being able to source every figure internally here, but doing so would make this article several times longer, and it is already probably too long. Any constructive comments are gratefully received.

A Timeline of the Extremist links of Jeremy Corbyn and his close allies

Jeremy Corbyn and his close allies - John McDonnell, Diane Abbott, Seamus Milne, and Andrew Murray - have spent the last 40 years promoting conspiracy theories, meeting with, and speaking in support of, a remarkable array of communists, dictators, terrorists, extremists and fascists. Some people refuse to believe this but the documentation is massive and easily available.

The following is a Timeline covering their activities and statements over the last 40 years. Others have done excellent work on twitter and elsewhere raising awareness of this stuff, and here I have collated as many verified reports as I can to give a clear historical overview of the material. What follows are just historic facts, with specific references linked in the dash '-' at the start of each line, and listed at the bottom. The only commentary, to explain some wider historical background, is given between asterisks * . . . *

The question is, what does this history say about their wisdom, their judgement, their loyalties, their beliefs and their convictions? A week from now, these people could be the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Home Secretary, and the Government's Head of Communications.

1976 - Andrew Murray, Corbyn's 2017 Election Co-ordinator, and close friend in Stop the War Coalition and other left-wing campaign groups, joins the Communist Party of Great Britain, working for the 'Straight Left' faction that attacks the party for not being Pro-Soviet enough.

1979-1981 - Seumas Milne, appointed by Corbyn as his Communications Director in 2015 (chief Spin Doctor), also works for 'Straight Left' while at Oxford .

1982 - The fascist Argentine military Junta invades the Falkland Islands to distract from their failing regime at home. Cllr Corbyn opposes a motion supporting British troops and attacks the British operation to liberate the islands with a conspiracy theory saying "The whole thing is a Tory plot to keep their money-making friends in business."

1983    - Jeremy Corbyn elected as MP.
            - Throughout the 1970s and 80s Corbyn supports the NI Republican movement and the hard left 'Troops Out' movement calling for immediate British military withdrawal from Northern Ireland.

*The Republican movement was the political wing of IRA terrorism and it was well known that its senior figures were aware and supportive of the IRA military campaign. Its aims were to force a British withdrawal from Northern Ireland through terrorism and violence against the wishes of the majority of its people. Beyond this the 'Troops Out' campaign, demanding immediate, unilateral British withdrawal from Northern Ireland, would almost certainly have led to a complete break-down of law and order, open civil war between Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries, and vastly more deaths*

1984 - Diane Abbott, while a Cllr, endorses the IRA in an interview with pro-Republican journal 'Labour And Ireland': "Every defeat of the British state is a victory for all of us. A defeat in Northern Ireland would be a defeat indeed."
- After the IRA Brighton Bombing kills five and injures 31 people, London Labour Briefing, a hard-left journal that Corbyn regularly contributed to and sat on the editorial board for, publishes a letter stating "'What do you call four dead Tories? A start!' Next to a picture of Lord Tebbit, who was seriously hurt (and whose wife was crippled for life) it added: 'Try riding your bike now, Norman!'" It also writes that "“We refuse to parrot the ritual condemnation of ‘violence’" and states that "Britain only pays attention to Northern Ireland when it is bombed into it".
- Two weeks after the Brighton bombing Corbyn invites two IRA terrorists to the House of Commons, he is criticised heavily by the Labour Chief Whip.
- Irish Republican terrorists kill a total of 48 people this year.

1985 - Corbyn attacks Anglo-Irish agreement, key early plank of the Peace Process, saying it “strengthens rather than weakens the border between the six and the 26 counties, and those of us who wish to see a united Ireland oppose the agreement for that reason.”
- Irish Republican terrorists kill 48 people this year.

1986 - At an event to commemorate 8 IRA terrorists who died launching a bombing and shooting attack on Loughgall Police Station, Corbyn is says "I'm happy to commemorate all those who died fighting for an independent Ireland,"
- Andrew Murray works for Soviet News Agency Novosti for over a year.
- In parliament Corbyn complains that "British foreign policy has been a furious hatred [...] of the Soviet Union" and insists the Soviet Leaderships pursued "policies of peace and disarmament". He accuses Conservatives of "pretending that the Soviet Union is our enemy" and blames this idea on a conspiracy "put forward by NATO and the Marshall Plan".
- Corbyn arrested protesting outside the trial of Patrick Magee, convicted for murdering five people in the Brighton Bombing.
- John McDonnell Cllr, attends event with Sinn Fein representatives where he calls for “ballot, the bullet and the bomb” to be used to unite Ireland, and 'jokes' about kneecapping Labour cllrs opposed to the event.
- Irish Republican terrorists kill a total of 40 people this year.

*The Marshall Plan was an American Aid programme that gave billions of dollars to Western European governments following WW2 to pay for rebuilding and strengthen Western Europe against the threat of Stalin's Soviet Union, which was busily crushing democracy in Eastern Europe*

1986-1992 - Corbyn, at this time a well-known Republican partisan in parliament, attends seven annual Republican events to honour dead terrorists and active “soldiers of the IRA", with the slogan "Force of arms is the only method capable of bringing about a free and united socialist Ireland". In 1988 the event's programme states "in this, the conclusive phase in the war to rid Ireland of the scourge of British imperialism… force of arms is the only method capable of bringing this about.”, in 1991 parroting this language Corbyn attacks "British imperialism” and praised Bobby Sands, the IRA terrorist.

1987 - Diane Abbott elected as MP
 - IRA bomb a Remembrance Day service, killing eleven civilians. Corbyn and Abbott sign EDM declaring Britain "primarily" responsible for terrorist bombing due to its "longstanding occupation" and calling for immediate British abandonment of Northern Ireland.
 - Corbyn calls for withdrawal from NATO during the 1987 General Election

1989 - The Morning Star, the communist Newspaper of which Corbyn is a long-time contributor and regular reader, famously reports the fall of the Berlin Wall with the headline "GDR unveils reforms package" and quotes material supplied directly by East Germany's communist dictatorship.

1991 - Corbyn states that he "did not believe in" the Cold War, claims the threat from the Soviet Union was "imaginary", and calls for the abolition of NATO.

1993 - Corbyn repeats that he "[does] not believe the former Soviet Union presented a threat", and claims that NATO meant that "this country's defence policy [...] was taken over by a group of generals sitting in [NATO HQ]" and criticised the "arms race promoted by NATO", which he blamed for the breakup of the USSR.

1995 - Corbyn condemned the NATO intervention in Bosnia against the Serbian forces responsible for the Srebrenica genocide as "one-sided" and "breathtaking" and insisted NATO should take no action to bring an end to the ongoing war.

1996 - Abbott makes racist statements arguing that "blond, blue-eyed" women should not be employed to provide medical care to black people.
       - IRA bombs Manchester injuring 200. Weeks later Corbyn tries to host the launch of Gerry Adams's autobiography in the Commons, which includes an account (allegedly fictional) of killing a British soldier, and which declares 'It might, or might not, be right to kill, but sometimes it is necessary.'

1997 - John McDonnell elected as MP

1998 - McDonnell attacks the Good Friday Agreement that ended the NI Troubles in the IRA's official newspaper, An Phoblacht saying "An assembly is not what people have laid down their lives for over thirty years…the settlement must be for a united Ireland."
  - The Omagh car-bombing, carried out by the Real IRA, kills 29 people in a town centre, and injures over 200. Other Republican terrorists kill 9 people this year.

1999 - Corbyn criticises NATO action to prevent Serbian ethnic cleansing of the Albanian Kosovars, labelling it "criminal" and claiming "the real issues were the grabbing of resources and weapon sales".
 - Andrew Murray, long-term member of the pro-Soviet British Communist Party, writes defending Stalin in the Morning Star, the Communist newspaper for which Corbyn also writes. He finishes by saying, "against imperialists, we are all Stalinists".

*Stalin was the totalitarian dictator of the USSR from 1924-1953, he was incredibly ruthless, cold and treacherous. Over several years he built the most totalitarian, repressive regime the world has probably ever seen, betrayed and executed almost all his former colleagues and friends, murdered around 15 million people through mass shooting, death through forced labour, mass deportations, deliberate famines, etc. His regime brutally repressed democracy across the whole of Eastern Europe for 40 years. His evil and death-toll was only surpassed by Hitler.*

2000-2006 - Corbyn campaigns for release of pair of terrorists convicted of car-bombing the Israeli Embassy in 1996.

2000 - Corbyn opposes the 2000 Terrorism Act, introduced by the Labour government, which gave a broad definition of terrorism for the first time. The Act also gave the police the power to detain terrorist suspects for up to seven days and created a list of proscribed terrorist organisations.

2001 - Abbott and Corbyn vote against proscribing al-Qaeda as a terrorist organisation. Also on the list was ETA, Tamil Tigers, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Salafist Group for Call and Combat, Harakat Mujahideen, etc. One of 30 occasions where they both opposed anti-terror legislation.
 - Two days after 3,000 people are killed in New York on September 11th Seamus Milne writes an article about America titled "They can't see why they're hated". He claims Americans "simply don't get it" and have a "record of unabashed national egotism and arrogance" because they can't see how attacking the Communist puppet and Taliban regimes in Afghanistan, fascists in Yugoslavia, and Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq drove anti-Americanism.
 - Corbyn jointly founds the 'Stop the War Coalition' with others including Andrew Murray of the Communisty Party of Britain. He campaigns against NATO intervening in Afghanistan to bring down the Taliban regime and destroy Al Qaeda in the country after they killed 3,000 people in New York City.
 - Corbyn votes against the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, passed by Labour after the September 11th attacks to counter terrorist threats to the UK.
 - Seamus Milne writes in the Guardian attacking efforts to try Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. He accuses the democratic Serbian government of  "digging up corpses to order" to support the war crimes trial, attacks the tribunal as a US tool, makes no mention of Serbian war crimes, and smears the post-Yugoslav states.

*Slobodan Milosevic was an extreme nationalist leader in Serbia who engineered the breakdown of Yugoslavia into ethnic War, and the campaigns of genocide, ethnic cleansing and mass murder that followed, as part of efforts to carve out an ethnically pure Greater Serbia. The most notorious, and largest crime was the massacre of 8,000 Bosniak Muslims at Srebrenica.*

2002 - The Al-Qaeda Bali bombing kills 202 people. Corbyn writes excusing the bombing. "The bomb was tragic, but it follows a history of great atrocity in Indonesia", "The CIA inspired a coup in Indonesia in 1968".
- Corbyn attends anti-Israel demo in Trafalgar square alongside hundreds of members of the proscribed terrorist organisation "Al Muhajiroun" who chant "Skud, Skud Israel" and "Gas, gas Tel Aviv", along with their support for bin Laden."
- Milne writes in the Guardian attacking a biography of Stalin, Koba the Dread for being too critical of Stalin. He denounces attempts "to bracket Stalin and Hitler as twin monsters of the past century - "Mao and Pol Pot are sometimes thrown in as an afterthought" and complains that it is "commonplace to equate communism and fascism as the two greatest evils of an unprecedentedly sanguinary era".

*Corbyn's statement about Indonesia is false, there was no coup in Indonesia in 1968, though there was a coup in 1965 that had nothing to do with the CIA.*

2002-2016 - Jeremy Corbyn is an active supporter of the 'Cuba Solidarity Campaign', a left-wing group actually devoted to solidarity with Cuba's repressive Communist government. It campaigns against US, or other country's sanctions against Cuba, but not against the government's complete repression of democracy, it's devastating economic policies, nor its harassment, imprisonment and murder of political opponents, religious dissenters, and others.

2003 - John McDonnell calls for IRA terrorists to be 'honoured', adding: "It was the bombs and bullets and sacrifice made by the likes of Bobby Sands that brought Britain to the negotiating table."
- Andrew Murray, member of the Stalinist aligned Communist Party of Britain expresses his party's support for the totalitarian dictatorship of North Korea stating "Our Party has already made its basic position of solidarity with Peoples' Korea clear".
- Murray is appointed Chair of 'Stop the War'.
- Corbyn writes opposing action against North Korea: "The declaration of North Korea as some kind of threat is [...] a pretext for stepping up economic and military pressure on that country. [...] I suspect this will be used to weaken or destroy the North Korean economy to force some kind of integration between North and South Korea. Then we may see the spread of free market capitalism into North Korea.” He also blamed the West for the Cold War stating the Soviet Union was “no real threat” and was opposed because “the West has sought to politically attack socialist systems”.
         - Abbott sends her son to a £12,700 a year private school in Westminster. She had previously attacked Tony Blair and Harriet Harman for sending their children to selective state schools, saying (about Harman) "She made the Labour Party look as if we do one thing and say another." In 2010 she defended her decision with the racist argument that "West Indian mums will go to the wall for their children" and argued that white colleagues "would never understand" because she came "from a culture where whatever you can do for your children you do."

*McDonnell's statement above is false. Britain offered a reasonable settlement in NI as early as 1973, in the Sunningdale Agreement. By 1985 Britain's enforcement of the Anglo-Irish agreement demonstrated it was prepared to impose a reasonable solution over Loyalist objections. The IRA chose to fight in an attempt to force the British out of NI through terror and violence, against the wishes of most of its population. Only when it became clear as the years wore on that the British would keep fighting back and could not be forced out did the IRA consider accepting a negotiated solution.*

2004 - McDonnell receives award for "unfailing political and personal support he has given to the republican community" from an IRA terrorist who in 1973 bombed the Old Bailey, killing one and injuring almost 200.
- 'Stop the War', which Corbyn stands on Steering Committee for, issues a statement supporting the Iraqi “struggle” against British troops “by any means necessary".

*The Iraqi 'resistance' was made up of assorted Baathist fascists, Islamist extremists and criminal gangs, and was responsible for mass murder, kidnapping, torture and huge destruction of the nation's infrastructure, representing around 85% of those killed in Iraq from 2003-2014*

2005 - Corbyn becomes a regular columnist for the far-left Morning Star, the newspaper that officially supports the Communist Party of Britain and its political platform. From the 1940's to 1980s it was infamous for its support for Soviet dictatorship and oppression in Eastern Europe, including show trials of anti-Communist patriots, repression of pro-democratic protests in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, and for being directly funded by the Kremlin.

2006 - John McDonnell runs for Labour Leader against Gordon Brown.  His campaign manager, one Owen Jones, tells the Weekly Worker, the paper of the Communist Party of Great Britain, "I am a Marxist and I am involved in this campaign". "The fundamental thrust [...] is the fight by Marxists to win over larger sections than themselves to Marxism." and when asked "in the meantime, you are keeping your Marxist powder dry?" he answers simply "Yes, I am."

2005-2015 - Corbyn and Abbot help found the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign, a pro-Govt lobby group, still active today.  Corbyn is a strong supporter of Chavez's Venezuela, repeatedly praising it with statements such as "Chavez showed us that there is a different and a better way of doing things", and "It’s called socialism, it’s called social justice".

2007 - The organisation Deir Yassin Remembered is expelled from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the largest British Pro-Palestine organisation, for its support of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, an event announced by an article in The Guardian. Jeremy Corbyn has supported DYR events in previous years and continues to attend meetings with them until 2014.

2008 - Diane Abbot argues that Mao Zedong did "more good than harm" on BBC's 'This Week' politics programme, saying "He led his country from feudalism, he helped to defeat the Japanese and he left his country on the verge of the great economic success they are having now".
 - Seamus Milne speaks at an 'anti-War' demo blaming "the West" for causing war from "Pakistan to Palestine" in order to "defend its interests" and praises the anti-Semitic, Islamist terror group Hamas for fighting against Israel.
- McDonnell launches a parliamentary Early Day Motion supporting IJAN, an anti-Zionist group that attacks Zionism for "perpetuat[ing] European racism and colonialism" and claims "Zionism is racist" because it "make[s] Jews white" by adopting "white racism". It also claims Zionism has a "shared Islamaphobia" that "call[s] for the persecution of Muslims" and "continues a long history of Zionist collusion with repressive and violent regimes, from Nazi Germany to the South African Apartheid regime".

*Mao Zedong probably ties with Hitler for being responsible for more deaths than any single person in modern history. His regime 1949-1976 killed millions directly through shootings and re-education camps in the anti-landlord, anti-counterrevolutionary and anti-Rightist campaigns, and killed tens of millions indirectly through the famines caused by his 'Great Leap Forward'. His 'Cultural Revolution' resulted in millions more deaths and the widespread destruction of irreplaceable, historical Buddhist, Taoist, Christian and other religious buildings, artifacts and art, as well as the murder of those practising any religion. Only after his death when Deng Xiaoping reversed his policies and reformed the Chinese economy on Capitalist lines did China's remarkable economic growth begin.* 

2009 - Corbyn invites Hamas and Hezbollah to the HoC saying "It will be my pleasure and honour to host an event in Parliament where our friends from Hezbollah will be speaking. And I’ve also invited friends from Hamas to come and speak as well."
 - One of the 'friends' at this meeting from Hamas is Dyan Abou Jahjah, who has promoted Holocaust denial, talking about "hoax gas chambers", and has said he "considered every dead British soldier a victory".
- Corbyn campaigns for Hamas to be removed from the list of terrorist organisations calling it "a big, big historical mistake" and calling Hamas an organisation for "social justice and political justice" in the Middle East.

*Hamas is a terrorist, anti-Semitic, extremist Islamist organisation that currently runs a brutal military, Islamist regime in Gaza. Its tactics include frequent use of torture, human shields, random bombing of civilians, and mass extra-judicial executions. It's fundamental charter includes anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and refers approvingly to the anti-Semitic forgery the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion'. Hezbollah is a similar terrorist organisation banned by the Arab League, United States, France, the Gulf Cooperation Council, Canada, the Netherlands, Israel, The EU, New Zealand, the UK, and Australia *

2009-2012 - Corbyn is paid £20,000 for appearances on Press TV, the propaganda arm of the Iranian Islamist State, a channel banned in the UK for its part in filming and broadcasting the forced confession of an Iranian journalist who had been arrested and tortured. Corbyn last appears 6 months after OfCom withdraw their UK licence.

*The Islamist Govt of Iran is a Shia fundamentalist regime notorious for imprisoning dissidents, executing homosexuals, imprisoning and torturing Christians and other religious minorities, and funding and supporting a range of Shia militias and terrorist groups across the Middle East, fuelling wars from Syria to Yemen*

2009 - Seumas Milne writes in the Guardian defending the Stalinist Soviet Union and attacking any claim that Stalin's regime bore responsibility for World War 2. He attacks East European politicians for comparing Communism and Nazism as similar evils. He attacks Britain and France and claims they are far more responsible for WW2 than Stalin's Soviet Union.

*Stalin's regime concluded an Alliance with Nazi Germany in 1939, the famous Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. This alliance divided Eastern Europe between the two dictatorships. Stalin jointly invaded Poland with Hitler and conquered the Baltic States. Hundreds of thousands of Poles and Balts were murdered by the Stalinist secret police by shooting or in the Gulag over the next two years, a preliminary to the suppression of democracy and campaigns of murder that would engulf Eastern Europe after Soviet Victory in 1945, and keep Eastern Europe under repressive, totalitarian regimes for 45 years*

2010 - At a Labour Leadership GMB Union hustings John McDonnell 'jokes' about murdering Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s.

2011 - Corbyn addresses Press TV, the Iranian propaganda channel, and calls the death of Bin Laden “an assassination attempt, and yet another tragedy upon a tragedy, upon a tragedy.”
- Corbyn becomes Chair of 'Stop the War', taking over from Andrew Murray of the CPB.
- Corbyn votes against the 'Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Act' that was designed to replace Control Orders with more focused and targeted measures.
 - Corbyn attacks NATO, demanding that the radical left "have to campaign against NATO's power, its influence and its global reach"
- McDonnell praises violent riots the previous year saying "students kicking the shit out of Millbank [...]  that's the best of our movement". He defends a student jailed for endangering police lives by throwing a fire extinguisher from a tall building at police, saying "he’s not the criminal. The real criminals are the ones [...] increasing the fees". He supports further rioting saying "We’ve got to encourage the direct action, [in] any form it can possibly take"
- Corbyn and McDonnell sign a parliamentary Early Day Motion calling for Holocaust Memorial Day to be renamed 'Genocide Memorial Day – Never Again For Anyone', which would erase the specific link to the Nazi targeting of Jewish people in the Holocaust.

2012 - Abbott is criticised for racist statements on twitter - "White people love playing 'divide and rule' We should not play their game"
 - On Press TV, the Iranian State TV channel banned in the UK for filming and broadcasting the forced confession of a tortured Iranian journalist, Corbyn praises the release of Hamas terrorists convicted of killing 570 Israelis. He refers to them as "brothers" says he's "glad they were released" and claims "you have to ask the question why they are in prison in the first place", while never mentioning the crimes they were convicted of.

2013 - Corbyn writes on Twitter and Labour websites praising Hugo Chavez of Venezuala on the event of his death.
 - Corbyn leads a panel at a Stop the War alongside a conspiracy theorist who claims the Syrian uprising against Assad was a "destabilisation campaign created in London, Washington and Paris" and that "demonstrations were used as cover for launching imperialist proxy war against Syria".
- Corbyn votes against the 'Justice and Security Act 2013', designed to allow private trial of a limited number of terrorist cases where public trial would endanger secret intelligence sources.
- McDonnell welcomes the 2008 economic crash at an anti-cuts meeting. He says "I've been waiting for this for a generation!" and "I'm straight, I'm honest with people: I'm a Marxist." He later claims this was a 'joke'.
- Corbyn attends an event organised by Deir Yassin Remembered, an organisation run by multiple, open Holocaust Deniers.

2014 - McDonnell 'jokes' about people wanting to murder a female MP, Esther McVey, at a Labour fundraising comedy event, Corbyn and Abbott are also there. He later calls her a "stain on humanity".
- Corbyn argues against "legal obstacles" for fighters returning from fighting with ISIL in Syria unless it can be judicially proved a crime has been committed, despite the obvious problem of collecting such evidence for crimes being committed in Syria. He argues we should not make “value judgments”, or take action against those who express support for terrorism. *At this time it is well known that ISIL are committing genocide, slavery, mass rape, etc.*
- Corbyn attends an event in Tunisia to hear speeches from members of Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, both proscribed terrorist groups responsible for murdering civilians in Israel and Palestine. He also hears from Ramsey Clark, a genocide denier and vocal supporter of Slobodan Milosovic, the Serbian dictator primarily responsible for genocide and war crimes in the Yugoslav wars of the early 90's. While there he also lays a wreath and takes part in prayers at the memorial to Black September terrorists responsible for organising the kidnap, torture and murder of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes in 1972.
- Stop the War, of which Jeremy Corbyn is Chairman, issues a statement attacking efforts to save Yazidis and Christians on Mt Sinjar and on the Ninevah plains from genocide at the hands of ISIL, referring to "“a false story”, “largely mythical”, “a false story of a massive Yazidi crisis” and “a non-existent siege”.
- Corbyn calls for NATO to be shut down and claims "Nato is an engine for the delivery of oil to the oil companies" and that "NATO was founded in order to promote a Cold War with the Soviet Union". Later once Labour Leader he refuses to state that he would come to the aid of another NATO country under attack.
- Milne writes repeatedly in the Guardian defending the Russian invasion of Ukraine, attacking the Ukrainian government as fascists, and attacking western govts for provoking Russian aggression by expanding NATO, in articles such as "Crimea is the fruit of Western Expansion".
*Needless to say Corbyn's comments on the history of NATO are Stalinist propaganda, and Milne's comments are all current propaganda lines of the authoritarian, quasi-fascist Russian state*.
 - Jeremy Corbyn speaks at a seminar called "The All Encompassing Revolution" celebrating the 35th Anniversary of the Islamist Revolution in Iran, an event organised by supporters of the Shia Fundamentalist Iranian Government, alongside representatives of Shia militias in Iraq.
 - Jeremy Corbyn again holds a meeting with board members of Deir Yassin Remembered, an organisation run by Holocaust Deniers and supporters of anti-Israeli terrorism.
- Venezuala enters Recession. As of 2018 it is still in continuing recession, with extreme poverty, malnutrition and death due to basic healthcare shortages increasing rapidly.

2015 - Corbyn becomes Leader of the Labour Party, appoints McDonnell as Shadow Chancellor, appoints Seumas Milne as chief spin doctor.
- Corbyn asked to condemn IRA murders can say only "I condemn what was done by the British Army as well as the other sides."
- Stop the War, the organisation Corbyn helped found, and had been chair of since 2011, issues article praising the "internationalism and solidarity" of ISIL, and compares them to anti-fascists fighting in the Spanish Civil War.
- Corbyn calls the Communist newspaper The Morning Star, for which he is a contributor, “the most precious and only voice we have in the daily media”. He ceases being a contributor after becoming Labour Leader.
- Corbyn speaks out in support of the Venezuelan government at an event held by the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign. Later this year he deletes articles supporting the Venezuelan regime from his website as that country slides deeper into violent oppression and recession.

2016 - Andrew Murray leaves the far-left Communist Party of Britain after 40 years as a member and joins Labour. Corbyn appoints him as 'Election Coordinator' with responsibility for preparing the party for a future General Election. After the 2017 general election he is re-employed as a Consultant on strategy for Jeremy Corbyn.
  - The Morning Star, the Communist newspaper of which Corbyn is a regular contributor and reader, reports in support of the criminal, fascist Assad Regime's final reconquest of Aleppo in Syria with the headline "Final Liberation of Aleppo is in sight".
- Corbyn praises Communist Dictator Fidel Castro on his death, commending his "heroism", and calling him "an internationalist and a champion of social justice." He sidesteps questions about Castro's decades of violent dictatorship, his oppression of democratic protests, his murder of political dissidents, and his ruinous economic policies that continue to impoverish Cuba.
- Venezuela increasingly falls into a socio-economic crisis caused by the Regime's hard-line Socialist policies, increasing poverty, unemployment, rampaging inflation and political violence.
 - Corbyn is questioned by a Select Committee about his association with Deir Yassin Remembered, an organisation run by multiple Holocaust Deniers. He lies about meeting them in 2013 and 2014, claiming he cut ties with them when they revealed their views a decade earlier.

2017-19
-As of 2017 Venezuela is in deep recession, with soaring poverty rates, hyperinflation, and terrible shortages of many basic commodities including food. Over 160 protesters have been killed in recent months in large scale protests, and many opposition politicians arrested, jailed and, it has been claimed, tortured.
-  As of Summer 2018 there are 2 million refugees from Venezuela, massive malnutrition and poverty within the country, hyperinflation of 46,000%, and continuing political violence. Corbyn and Abbott supported the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign, a pro-govt lobby group until 2015, after the country had begun its current recession. Corbynite MPs such as Chris Williamson continue to support the VSC until at least 2017, as well the pro-Cuban dictatorship Cuba Solidarity Campaign..
- In Jan 2019 the number of refugees from Venezuela reaches 3 million.


Sources
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4571924/Corbyn-s-30-years-talking-terrorists.html
https://order-order.com/2017/05/31/top-irish-historian-corbyn-didnt-support-ira-ceasefire/
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