Is the West hypocritical for forcing its liberal ethics onto Africa, while also decrying colonialism? Some Africans think so...
...plus some thoughts on adopting a more positive attitude than feminism
Hello all. I’ve returned from a short holiday to a very cold and rainy Britain and the news that an election has been called… oh dear! The electoral choices are so depressing that I think I will try to avoid political commentary as much as possible, unless issues that I particularly care about become the focus of debate. But it’s not often that happens.
I hope you managed to catch some of the films I recommended in my last post. I’m a huge movie fan, though find a lot of modern cinema unwatchable as it’s so dark. Please do pass on any good recommendations that you find.
This week the latest issue of Christianity magazine has been published, and within is my article on the complicated relationship between Africa and the West, especially over LGBT rights. Many Africans think that Western governments and churches are acting in a colonial fashion. Given modern liberal sensitivity about our colonial past, it’s surprising to me that the West is still trying so hard to impose its morals onto African countries. But it’s not a simple or easy subject to discuss, and so I tried hard to represent the various viewpoints fairly. Check it out here.
Also this week, I guest wrote an article about my experience of liberation from feminist ideas, relating it to
newsletter’s founder ’s own attitudes about victimhood and race. He is an up-and-coming commentator who is well worth following and listening to, who seems to share my concerns about the importance of family and community. Conversion to Christianity often brings about a change in worldview, and I am grateful for the more positive, loving and ‘victor’ mentality I’ve gained through my faith.From the archive
This week I’m being interviewed about my conversion itself. I have historically avoided this as I’m not comfortable on screen - but a recent brush with cancer has made me rethink. So, here’s a recent interview I did with Glen Scrivener.
Hi Heather. Thanks for the link to the interview about your (and other people's) conversion. Fascinating to learn that you worked at the Guardian (with all that means about politics, identity, activism etc) and found yourself on the path to conversion (and beyond) from that starting point. I don't mean it as a cheap point, but I did find myself recalling that old aphorism about 'if you are not a socialist by the time you are 20 you have no heart. If you are still one at the age of 40 you have no brain"(!) (I speak as someone who describes himself as non-party political, yet intensely political in outlook).
Without trying to downplay the 'event-ness' of any particular conversion, I think it is valuable to assert that the beginnings of faith (as far as we are aware of them self-reflectively) are better described as an introduction to a lifelong process of being converted, as opposed to a completed re-invention of the person in question. I know you wouldn't deny this, but I think the 'being made more like Christ every day' is a better way of putting it. I completely agree with you that love must be at the heart of it all, and that 'God is love', when seen from the perspective of faith in Christ, is as different a proposition about God, and about love, as it is possible to have when held up alongside secular ideas about love (feelings, needs, romance etc) and the 'spiritual' (feelings again, yearnings for the 'other', anxiety about the future, frustration with the hollow promises of materialism etc).
I am reading 'Biblical Critical Theory' (How the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture) by Christopher Watkin (Zondervan Academic, 2022). It is excellent. A very thoughtful but accessible engagement with politics, culture and faith through the prism of the Bible. He is particularly good on the way in which both Left and Right have some of the truth about the issues they are passionate about, while a thoroughly Biblical approach takes those issues to a level that neither of the antagonists can do in and of themselves. It's over 600 pages long (!), partly because it attempts (pretty successfully) to combine history, anthropology, politics, philosophy, and theology into an honest appraisal of the human condition from a distinctively Christian standpoint. I am not aware of anything else out there that would rival it (as yet). Highly recommended.
Hi Heather. I think you are right about the boomers and the persistence of 'student purity leftism' in the British context - although, according to a number of studies and reports, in continental Europe the young appear to be embracing (rediscovering?) 'traditionalism' and the political right. Evidence perhaps of the creeping advance of polarisation in the body politic of the West.
I haven't read Neil Shenvi, but will. I suspect Watkin's book title might be a deliberate echo of the term 'Critical Theory' - offering us the Bible's version of what a universal lens of understanding might look like. Interestingly, and somewhat contradictorily, a big part of Watkin's thesis is that the Bible does not in fact offer a single 'one size fits all' interpretive tool for reality and our experience of it. Instead, it functions more like a choir than a soloist (all the different genres, authors etc). No such thing as a 'silver bullet'!