I have known the One World Centre, its staff and
committee since its inception (which I was actually involved in) and
they are well meaning, honest and open people. When the OWC held a
tenth anniversary concert celebrating the island's hidden cultural
diversity a couple of weeks back I went out of my way to get family
and friends to go. At that concert the toilet-twinning idea was
launched, and we left seriously intending to sign up and join in.
Then we found out who the money actually goes to,
so we cannot. For the record, Cord is the trading name of Christian
Outreach (England & Wales registered charity number 1070684), so
actually both partnership charities here are faith -based.
Tearfund demands that both volunteers and paid
workers sign a mission statement binding them to a somewhat
fundamentalist interpretation of Christianity as a condition of
employment. A highly respected gay Christian who runs one of the
UK's most prestigious faith-based campaign groups sent me a copy some
years ago. He and other liberal Christians say that, in practice, the
statement weeds out dissenters as it would not be possible for any
honest person practising the ideals of the UN Convention on Human
Rights to sign.
Cord, while
on paper run by Christians who think their faith requires them to first help
the dispossessed (rather than judge or convert them) is linked by a common
trustee to SaltMalawi Trust (E&W charity number 1139160) which.......well,
frankly, is not. If you are at all concerned at the way Western evangelicals have stoked up folk myths about witchcraft and homosexuality in order to profit from the homegrown African money church movement you might want to give that direct debit a miss.
Returning to the OWC itself - I even briefly
joined the committee at one point, in a bid to meet predominantly
faith-based people halfway in efforts to move past the awful “I'm
all right Jack” little islander mentality which prevails here. Too
many crises of conscience caused me to resign within a month or two,
and at the time I felt like a minority of one within another minority
which was not much larger.
I know that, in practice, the decent Christians
within the OWC fight an uphill battle against the apathy and racism
of many local worshippers. From conversations with others in recent
months alone I also now know the real irony: this is that is there
is actually a much larger group who think like me outside the tiny
OWC circle of church influence.
We share the human, rather than faith-based,
aspects of the OWC vision. We think it would be counter-productive to
start another version (especially when the basic idea and links with
government are in place) but there is no way any of us, in good
conscience, can support initiatives which do not differentiate
between, say, the principled stance of Christian Aid (who sign up to
UNHRC standards of employment and aid distribution) and Samaritan's
Purse/Operation Christmas Child (who can fly someone in Franklin
Graham's Lear jet to a disaster for a photo, then back again as soon
as the world press leave, and have been known to demand Catholic or
Muslim refugees convert before handing over facilities SP were
actually distributing as part of a US AID program).
What is the answer?
Sadly, I cannot see long term change or an
increase in public support until it is made clear that the OWC are
NOT primarily there to channel overseas aid from the Manx government to
international aid agencies, but an attempt to engage with Manx people
and affect change from the grass roots up. Given the wide public
mistrust of both the Manx government and quite justifiable mistrust
of aid agencies with £100K executives I cannot see how they can
succeed while the public links them to attempts to increase overseas aid, and as long as they are wrongly associated with
major aid agency tubthumpers I fear the OWC are fast losing even the limited goodwill
of the young and liberal.
For example,
at my daughter's school she reports pupils cannot tell the difference between
OWC visitors and compulsory sermons from the Scripture Union. The kids seem to
regard both as “god-bothering nutters” to be slept through until the teacher
can be bothered to turn up and proper lessons start.
They are, I hasten to say,
wrong, because OWC staff scrupulously avoid professing any personal faith they may have
in schools. The problem is, as the very few promoters of “good causes” either
sanctioned or choosing to go into schools tend to be preachy, the audience no
longer waits until they start talking to switch off. And if, say, they are
there as part of some option intended to get kids thinking about the wider
world only churchy kids tick that option box, so they never discover the
difference. Self-fulfilling prophecies and all that.
Perhaps a short term compromise, and acceptable
start, would be to require both partners of OWC projects and Manx
government overseas aid recipients to commit to working practices
that respect UNHRC standards and UK/Manx law on human rights. At
present far too many can slip through the net by pleading religious
belief, or are simply not scrutinised or challenged.
Churches may reasonably expect worshippers to
voluntarily believe the apparently irrational or supernatural as a
membership condition. They cannot expect public funds to
theoretically provide goods and services to the dispossessed if a
condition of that “aid” is the “right” to promote or endorse
hatred. When they do that, all Manx people become a party to the
ignorance, the house-burnings, the violence, the second class
treatment of women, torture of children and other such crimes against
humanity. That is not what foreign aid is meant to do.
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