I have to confess I do giggle when I see people contradicting themselves without realising. It seems to happen quite a lot in church. Here, though, I know perfectly well what they really mean, and would often do well to close my own physical eyes in order to open my spiritual ones too.
So, I humbly suggest, would St. Paul’s.
Can they not see how ridiculous it is to close their doors when the protesters are hardly blocking the entrance? Can they really picture a Jesus who would take legal action to forcibly remove people because they were a bit unsightly or inconvenient? Can they not see how painfully ironic it is to trumpet their self-inflicted losses of £20,000 a day at the hands of a group whose very aim it is to expose that sort of capitalist mentality? Have they not noticed that this protest on their doorstep is an opportunity to engage with exactly the sort of people the Church should be upholding, by talking with them, working with them, helping to make their voice more effective?
Quite. But St. Paul’s are not the only ones with their eyes shut. Does this tent festival on the pavement really think that big business will change its ways because a group of people held up placards for a few weeks outside a church? That’s not the way business leaders think. It’s not the language they understand. The Fairtrade movement became massive and mainstream not because it appealed to managers’ guilty consciences, but because it formed and presented them with a solid business case for doing the right thing. People walked into boardrooms across the country with suits on, armed with facts, figures and strategies to prove that treating workers well would ultimately benefit business. Fairtrade spoke the CEOs’ language, and so it was heard. Take another example: the climate change movement who have been unsuccessfully hugging trees for decades finally gained ground in the last 10 years or so by showing how our actions really are affecting us all — and when they started speaking our language, we started to listen.
Jesus did the same thing with the religious leaders of his day when he saw how their laws were oppressing people instead of helping them worship God. He taught in their synagogues and used their own debating style. He told stories in terms both the people and the leaders could instantly relate to. He didn’t just tell them they were wrong; he spelled out the alternative, using both powerful stories and his own life to prove that it really worked, to show that it was a truer way to live and worship than their legalism. They didn’t like what he said, but at least they got it.
If we believe capitalism is doomed, we need to build and present a case for why it will fail, what the credible alternative is, and why it is in all our interests to change. We need to do that in the language of business, and the language of politicians. Only then do we stand a chance of succeeding.