We love Giles Fraser

From time to time Canon Giles Fraser, the Anglican priest-in-charge of St Mary's, Newington, darling of the BBC's Thought for the Day waffle-slot and the Guardian's leftie-rant pages, has received harsh criticism on this blog. This is mostly because his passionate approval of homosexual acts, same-sex "marriage" and secular socialism seem to jar badly with Christianity. Some have claimed that when he introduces himself with "It's me, Giles!" it does sound suspiciously like "It's Sméagol!" but I am sure this is purely a coincidence.

This is NOT Giles Fraser, merely a lookalike.

However, this blog is nothing if not fair, so credit where credit is due: sometimes Fr Giles gets it right. On August 29th he had a go at Dawkins and his remarks about Downs Syndrome, with a piece Nobody is better at being human, Professor Dawkins, least of all you. Sorry, Richard, if even Giles Fraser thinks you're barmy, then you're in trouble.

Dawkins explains his theory of moral relativism to a rather bronzed Einstein.

Only a week earlier, on August 22nd Giles had decided that, all things considered, he wasn't keen on Islamic violence (decapitation, crucifixion, etc.), writing If this is real religion, then you can count me as an atheist. A poor title, Giles, as Guardian readers have a short attention span and many will have read that as simply You can count me as an atheist, but never mind.

"When's George Galloway turning up?"

Go back one more week to August 15th, and he's writing Sometimes it’s good to talk – even to ‘terrorists’. This is his bravest piece of all, as it challenges the left-wing Gaza always good, Israel always bad line with a more balanced Gaza!? Israel?! Arentchasickofemboth?? judgement.

Well, you can see what a difficult position this puts me in. When I need a spiritually nourishing subject for my blog, I find out what Richard, Tina, Giles, ... have been doing, and usually one of them comes up trumps. But now I can no longer rely on Giles. Bastard.

The Pope takes a plane

On behalf of Pilot Pontius and his crew we'd like to welcome you all to our flight from Tel Aviv to Rome. Please take your places as soon as possible, and fasten your seat belts. Place all personal items either in the luggage racks or under the seat in front of you.

I'm hoping my briefcase will fit under the seat in front of me.

For those Anglican priests travelling with us as observers, please be aware that you are not allowed to have 39 articles with you in the cabin, and 38 of them will be placed in the hold.

Once we have taken off and the captain has switched off the seat-belt sign, the Pope will be coming round with a selection of off-the-cuff remarks and brand new dogmas. Today we have some confusing comments about priestly celibacy and remarried divorcees; unfortunately the Pius XII beatification kit is still unavailable, and frankly, barring a miracle, we don't expect to see it soon.

The Pope's "clean-up" campaign starts here.

We're now ready for the safety demonstration. In case of a mighty rushing wind and tongues of fire, oxygen masks will drop down in front of you. In case of landing on water, there is an inflatable chasuble under your seat, although some passengers may prefer to dispense with this and walk on the water instead.

"It's not by Rolf Harris, is it?"

---

There has been some debate on the nature and meaning of the Pope's reference to his own gestures, whether spontaneous or pre-planned, authentic or inauthentic. It is hoped that the author of the Pope Francis Little Book of Insults will soon delight us with the Pope Francis Little Book of Gestures.

Learn how to tell this...

... from this!

Bad hymns 26

Today is an historic occasion, as this is the first time that we are inviting back an Eccles Bad Hymn Award author who has already spoken to us. We talked to Estelle White a few months ago about her remarkable hymn The Perfect Face, but the nominations are for the hymn, not the author, so here she is again with Moses, I know you're the man.

E: Estelle, it always moves me when I see that one of your hymns is scheduled... in fact sometimes it moves me out of the church completely. Welcome back.

EW: It's great to be with you again, Eccles. You're really going to appreciate this hymn.

E: "Moses, I know you're the man" the Lord said.
"You're going to work out my plan..."
I've got it - A man, a plan, a canal - Panama! One of the world's great palindromes!

Moses's cunning plan is to lead his people across the Panama canal.

EW: No, no, Eccles, no canals. What the Lord says next is that Moses should lead the Israelites out of slavery and He will make them a wandering race, called the people of God.

E: Well that's a very good offer, if you like wandering, I suppose. Are you sure that the wandering idea didn't come later, when the Israelites started misbehaving? It's not in the original contract.

EW: Let me sing the chorus, Eccles, as you'll have to sing it four times yourself:

So ev'ry day
we're on our way,
for we're a travelling, wandering race
called the people of God.

E: I see... well, no, I don't. You're identifying us with the Israelites lost in the desert? Or some other walking party?

Is Estelle White thinking of us?

EW: Anyway, the rest of the hymn simply wrote itself. I rang all the changes on travelling, wandering, vagabond, moving... until I ran out of steam.

E: With some brilliant couplets on the way, I see.

Don't get too set in your ways,
Each step is only a phase.

This doesn't actually make a lot of sense if you think about it, does it? I would have preferred:

I seem to be lost in a maze:
It must be one of those days.

EW: Try this instead:

Look at the birds in the air,
They fly unhampered by care.

E: With respect, Estelle, are we not getting away from the main message of the song? We're having a race.

We're a travelling wandering race.

EW: Well, nearly right, Eccles. Anyway I am delighted to know that at least three separate people nominated my hymn.

E: Yes, I've arranged counselling for them. Estelle, thank you very much.

---

Previous entries for the Eccles Bad Hymn Award:

Lord of the Dance.    Shine, Jesus, shine.    Enemy of apathy.    Walk in the Light.
Kum Ba Yah.    Follow me.    God's Spirit is in my heart.    Imagine.    Alleluia Ch-ch.
It ain't necessarily so.    I, the Lord of sea and sky.    Colours of day.    The red flag.
Go, the Mass is ended.    I watch the sunrise.    Bind us together, Lord.    Our god reigns.
My way.    Ding-Dong! The witch is dead.    If I were a butterfly.
Journeys ended, journeys begun.    The Galilee song.    The perfect face.
Jesus Christ the apple tree.    On eagle's wings.

1 Kings

Well, I've been a little busy recently doing blog repairs, but the Eccles Bible Project must go on. In particular, I am being telephoned at all hours of the day and night by a retired zoologist in Oxford, who is studying this course with great interest.

Mr Eccles cannot speak to you right now, Professor Dawkins.

"I'm bored, Eccles," says this zoologist, a modest chap who wishes to remain nameless. "Give me more spiritual nourishment, or I'll have to go back to spending all day on Twitter as follows:

Monday: Insult Catholics.
Tuesday: Insult Muslims.
Wednesday: Re-tweet sycophantic remarks saying how great I am.
Thursday:  Insult pro-lifers, opponents of SSM, anyone 
with any moral views.
Friday: Day of abstinence. Off Twitter. Working on new book 
More garbage. I'll think of a better title later.
Saturday: Regret insulting all Catholics; insult the Pope instead.
Sunday: Attend Church of [my name] and accept praise from grateful
worshippers.

So, let's get on with 1 Kings.

Or should it be "3 Kings"?

It's been pointed out to me that some Bibles used by Catholics - although not all - would call this "3 Kings" and the books of Samuel would be 1 Kings and 2 Kings. Well, whatever we call it, it does contain lots of historical stuff about Kings of Israel.

Solomon, son of David, is well-known: ♫ Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anoin-ted Sol-o-mo-on KING! ♫ - as Handel put it.

God offers Solomon a wish: Ask what thou wilt that I should give thee. Solomon turns down the obvious things - money, women, Jerusalem to win the cup ... and asks: Give therefore to thy servant an understanding heart, to judge thy people, and discern between good and evil.

THIS PLEASES GOD. So much so that Solomon ends up with lots of money and women as well.

Some of Solomon's 700 mothers-in-law.

Well, that's our bit of moral teaching out of the way. Solomon also builds a temple, which will survive 400 years until Nebuchadnezzar knocks it down to make way for a housing estate. More on that later.

We fast-forward to the death of Solomon the Wise, and the arrival on the scene of his son Rehoboam (or Roboam) the Unwise. His offer to the people is, frankly, not a great vote-winner: My father beat you with whips, but I will beat you with scorpions.

Actually, some of my customers do ask for the "scorpion" service.

For what it's worth, the old men had given better advice than this, but it was the young men who came up with this vote-loser.

So the kingdom is divided - Rehoboam is left with just two of the twelve tribes (in the south), while Jeroboam, a known trouble-maker, gets the other ten (in the north).

A short guide to Biblical characters.

The brand-name Israel goes with Jeroboam's kingdom, although in fact we should be just as interested in the "other one", which is Judah.

One of the most important people not yet mentioned is Elijah (Elias) the prophet, who takes on the rival prophets of Baal and wins. You may say that's not very difficult, really, as Baal is a made-up God, but it does help if you've got a good line to the real God when necessary. Nowadays there are very few people who worship Baal, even in Oxford.

Look, I can see you're fidgeting, Richard. I know it was you who was rustling those papers. And stop pulling Polly Toynbee's hair. Honestly, these Bible classes become harder and harder to control. Go and look up Jezebel, and write me an essay on what happened to her. Something to do with dogs, you'll find...

Jezebel, wife of Ahab, and another villain.

O.K. Class dismissed!

Genesis

This is the first chapter in the Eccles Bible project, where we explain the Bible in simple terms to an atheist called Richard, who knows something about science, but does not really understand life.

Let there be light! Genesis 1:3.

Now, I am not taking a fundamentalist everything-is-literally-true or even a sola scriptura approach in this project. And Richard, old man, if you get to the end of my course and become a protestant rather than a catholic, that's fine too. A great improvement on atheism, I can assure you. Indeed, I'm mostly going to be using the King James Bible: I know you think it's a great piece of literature - although mysteriously, your wife tells me that there are lots of holes in your personal copy, where the words God, Jesus, Christ, Heaven, Devil, Sin etc. have been excised with a pair of scissors (and, oddly, the word Rome, too).

Now there are several problems that Richard finds with Genesis, because he assumes it is intended to be read as a completely literal account of events.

God created the world in six days, ending up with man, and - as an improvement - woman.

Stephen Hawking explains the mathematics behind Genesis, Chapter 1.

Well, it seems that what the authors of Genesis are suggesting is that the universe did come into being, somehow or other, and that gradually different creatures emerged, until one of them became identifiable with the intelligent, thinking, wise beings we see around us today - those who read the Daily Mail and watch Top Gear, and use these media as ways of understanding the deeper mysteries of life.

So God created man in his own image. Genesis 1:27.

Apples, talking snakes, etc. What a load of rubbish!

Now, stop being silly, Richard. The Adam and Eve story as a legend, all to do with Man's attempts to defy the will of God. It does not need to be literally true in every particular to convey a message to us.

Man's downfall. Genesis 3:6.

What's more, although mainstream Christians tend not to believe in the literal truth of a story involving talking snakes, there is no particular reason why a talking snake could not exist - after all, we have talking birds and talking mammals....

A talking gorilla (L) and a talking snake (R).

The rest is all primitive stuff about bronze-age goatherds.

Well, we have to admit that several of the characters in Genesis (and there are many interesting ones, such as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and so forth) would have lived in the bronze age, and some of them would have owned goats. But then, Richard lives in the plastic age and wrote a D.Phil. about chickens, so we don't seem to have moved on significantly.

Let's get on to Jacob, and see what he has to say.

Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man. Genesis 27:11.

Well, yes, that's one thing he said, although not necessarily the most important.

Look, I'm a busy man. What is the point of Genesis?

Well, Richard, it's the beginning of Man's story. It shows that people are not perfect, and they commit sins. The best people are trying to understand who God is and what He wants (a question not completely answered to everyone's satisfaction even now). We first encounter Israel - initially an alias for Jacob, but then a name for his many descendants - which will become quite important later on, especially when we get to see God's plans.

Jacob (alias Israel) has an odd dream. Genesis 28:12.

Now you see the problem that Genesis poses for materialists and secularists. First, you have to go for the meaning behind the legends, rather than worrying whether Methuselah literally lived for 969 years or only 96. Second, there are the underlying themes that God is out there and that sometimes we actually do wrong things - even you, Richard. There, there, don't cry, dry your eyes... here's a handkerchief. Now, give us a big blow! Well done.

A fellow of New College, Oxford, discovers that he is a sinner.

Let's take the later part of Genesis as "oral tradition," which someone finally wrote down. It seems probable that Abraham and co. really did exist, and did roughly the things attributed to them. When we eventually get onto the New Testament, we'll see something more in the line of eye-witness accounts, and literal truth will be more important.

So, our story today ends with the people of Israel settling in Egypt. This turns out not to be what they really wanted, but we'll find out more about this when we get on to Exodus.

So Joseph died... in Egypt. Genesis 50:26.