Article

Ambition

Comment

General Election 24

Politics

18 June 2024

5 min read

Is it really time to “go for the jugular”?

How to handle political enemies.

Henna Cundill

Henna is a researcher with the Centre for Autism and Theology at the University of Aberdeen.

A screen grab of a news paper report with a headline and picture. The headline reads: 'Go for Keir Starmer’s jugular to rescue campaign, Rishi Sunak urged'.

The Times' 16 June headline.

The Times.

As the election campaigns trundle down the hill to election day, poll trackers have shown little meaningful change for weeks. Amongst my friends and acquaintances, I can find barely anyone who is bothering to read the campaign coverage. No doubt, news editors are just as bored as we are with the same-old, same-old. Perhaps it is they who are leaning on commentators to spice up their language, saying things like it is time to “go for the jugular”. Are they straining for headlines by provoking candidates to stop waving manifestos and start lobbing personal attacks? (And did anyone stop to consider the irresponsibility of such language, following the awful, violent murders of MPs Jo Cox and David Amess?)

It is very uncomfortable to have enemies, which only makes it all the more astonishing that anyone ever goes into politics – professional enemy-making, if you will. And there is an incredible subtlety to the business. As a politician, one needs to be a convincing enemy to one’s enemy, but at the same time, a convincing friend to one’s enemy’s friends (in the hope that they might switch their allegiance). Then, if elected, one must serve a whole constituency, including many ‘enemies’ who didn’t actually vote for you, and probably never will. In such a complicated game of gregarious gymnastics, and with the ever worrying rise of violence and threats against MP’s, how on earth does a politician maintain any reasonable sense of safety and of self?

An enemy who has lost his temper is one of the few people that you can trust to tell you the truth about yourself.

Reflecting on this, I wonder whether the game of politics gives a fresh insight into those very famous words that Jesus once said: “Love your enemies.” This instruction has long baffled and inspired the great thinkers of this world. Why would Jesus say such a thing? Some focus on the way in which loving one’s enemies benefits the lover. Desmond Tutu, for example, said, “Love your enemy: it will ruin his reputation.” Or Mark Twain, somewhat more cynically, said, “Love your enemy: it will scare the hell out of them.” There are many others I could quote here, but the general theme is one of power. Loving empowers the lover to keep going in the face of hate, and it is surely the only way an MP can get through the day, serving so many people who didn’t actually vote for them.

But looking at those who speak of enemies, there is another general theme that can be identified, one which pre-dates Jesus’ command to love enemies, and one that is to do with the way in which they help to define us. The Greek Philosopher Antisthenes is reported to have said that an enemy who has lost his temper is one of the few people that you can trust to tell you the truth about yourself. As a thinker, Antisthenes was famously cynical, one who very much subscribed to a “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” kind of vibe, even welcoming ill-repute because it could help one to grow in virtue.

Given the popularity of Greek Philosophy in the first century, it is possible that many of Jesus’ listeners had Antisthenes pithy advice, or something like it, in the back of their minds when Jesus uttered his famous words. Of the many ways to understand “love your enemies”, some may have heard it as a reminder that enemies do us a kind of service. They help us to define ourselves, giving a profound (if somewhat uncomfortable) reflection of how we appear to others. Of course, enemies are biased. Like a distorted mirror, they over emphasise our bad propensities and overlook the good. But taken in the right spirit, this serves as a foil to our friends and acquaintances who may well distort the uncomfortable truth about ourselves in the opposite direction.

Perhaps it is no bad thing for our politicians to admit their mutual enmity – not in the sense of tearing each other down but in the sense of sharpening each other up...

As a young adult, I was given the advice not to fear enemies, but to divide them up into two categories: enemies in residence and enemies in exile. The exiled ones are the ones who are simply dangerous or nasty – the bullies, the gossips and those who may tend towards violence. To love these people is to pity them and to pray for them, but also to keep them far enough away so that they cannot do you harm. Enemies in residence, however, are the useful ones. These are the enemies that you keep just close enough so that you can hear what they have to say. They will scrutinise your words and your actions, they will cast doubt on your motivations, and they will scoff at your ambitions. All of this is both miserably uncomfortable and highly valuable, sowing just enough seeds of self-doubt that you check yourself, analyse yourself and strive to be the best that you can be.

Perhaps Antisthenes was on to something: when it comes to harsh critique from enemies, what doesn’t kill you does indeed make you stronger. And perhaps this is one of the ways to interpret Jesus’ words, “love your enemies” – in the sense of loving what they do for you in terms of personal growth. If this is the case, then perhaps it is no bad thing for our politicians to admit their mutual enmity – not in the sense of tearing each other down but in the sense of sharpening each other up, of spurring each other on to be the best, most clearly defined versions of themselves that they can be.

So, it is fine with me if there are enemies in politics: a person with enemies is a person who knows who they are and what they stand for. Enemies should, as Jesus advised, love each other enough to do the job properly and fairly – (this is no inlet for cowardly keyboard warriors). But even so, I didn’t care for the cheap, headline-grabbing phrase “go for the jugular” – it all sounds unnecessarily violent. As much as we and our politicians should love one another enough to be enemies, let us not love one other to death.

Article

Comment

Paganism

Sport

28 July 2024

8 min read

Paris 2024 and Christianity’s opening ceremony

A subversive Olympic opening relies on Christianity’s own beginnings.

Tim May

Tim is an associate vicar of King’s Cross Church (KXC), a London-based Anglican church.

A painting of the Last supper showing Christ and the disciples at a table.

da Vinci's Last Supper.

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, held on the River Seine, has unsurprisingly caused controversy. Such moments, where one nation through pageantry and spectacle performs itself to all others, never fail to draw comment. The 2024 ceremony has drawn various detractors, not least those claiming the ceremony was an “attack on Christianity.”

You might remember the masterful opening to the London 2012 games. Director Danny Boyle’s theatrical spectacle told a symbolic story of nationhood. By depicting the bucolic, the industrial, and the NHS, he considered the UK in both dark moments and at its brightest. With a great exhibition of British humour, James Bond appeared to parachute out of a helicopter with HRH Queen Elizabeth II, while Mr Bean entertained the whole wordlessly through sardonic single-finger piano playing.

Widely held to be a creative triumph, Boyle was preceded by the Beijing Olympics where its opening ceremony, CGI fireworks put to one side, wowed the world with unprecedented size and scale, reminding us that we live in an era of Chinese power.

Tokyo 2021, delayed by a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, involved 1,800 drones filling the skies – a faultless demonstration of a technological age where Japanese engineering has been indispensable.

The sporting side of things was easily forgotten as we witnessed an emphatically kitsch depiction of French history and culture.

In 2024 Paris, the weather was perhaps the greatest focus of attention, which suited the British commentary perfectly. We Brits surely are the world experts in making light-entrainment out of describing rain. Soggy athletes sailed the Seine on a variety of uninspiring looking barges. Sanguine but soaked, the athletes dutifully waved and smiled; adorned not in gold, silver or bronze but flimsy ill-fitting plastic ponchos.

Overshadowing this athletes’ parade were the creations of theatre director Thomas Jolly, mastermind of the whole ceremony. Boldly deciding to choose the city as a stage, rather than make use of the conventional choice of a stadium, the sporting side of things was easily forgotten as we witnessed an emphatically kitsch depiction of French history and culture.

Although the weather somewhat thwarted proceedings, it was the content of the performance that drew criticism.

Far-right politicians decried Jolly’s offering as a violation of French nationhood. Conservative pundits focused their criticism on Jolly’s elevation of LGBTQIA+ culture.

Christian commentators have, with various degrees of rancour, condemned a strange scene where Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting of the Last Supper was subverted by a pastiche of ostentatiously queer characters. At the centre of which was not Jesus Christ but a robust-looking figure resembling Lady Liberty.

Elon Musk spoke up in protest too, posting that it was ‘extremely disrespectful to Christians.’ Full-throttled cries of blasphemy resound, and probably for good reason. What we witnessed was Christ being usurped and replaced by the insurgency of self-expression and the currently sacred idea of diversity and inclusion.

Ahead of the ceremony, Jolly told British Vogue about the heart behind his creation: “there is room for everyone in Paris. Maybe it’s a little chaotic, it’s true, but that allows everyone to find a place for themselves.” The opening ceremony will be a success, Jolly says, “if everyone feels represented in it.”

I guess this isn’t the case for the thirty per cent of the world who would identify as Christian. That’s because every family and flavour of Christianity would recognise that Holy Communion, the central act of Christian Worship for 2000 years, the institution of which is depicted in da Vinci painting, was being publicly and globally vandalised.

When Christianity becomes moral wallpaper to an entire civilisation and its culture, it unsurprisingly becomes a target for satire.

How can we make sense of this moment? Is there anything more for the Christian to contribute other than indignation or outrage?

Whenever something like this occurs it reminds me of the central role Christianity has played in Western culture. The intelligibility of the ceremony’s controversial scene rests on the idea that da Vinci’s painting is a globally recognised symbol. Otherwise, we would have just been watching a really strange dinner party with no food. But with Da Vinci’s famous painting in our mind the subversive power of Jolly’s scene hits hard.

The view, popularised by the historian Tom Holland among others, would go as far as to suggest that Christianity’s effect on Western culture is so pervasive that even moments of protest and subversion, as we saw in the Paris ceremony, are cultural phenomena inherited from the Protestant Reformation. Regardless of how far you agree with Holland’s thesis, Jolly's subversion only makes sense because of the dominant role Christianity has played in shaping the western imagination, and that is a position of latent power that should cause pause for reflection.

I’ve read half a dozen articles from a certain sort of right-wing journalist who parrot thoughts like, “they wouldn’t do that with the Quran”. That might be right, but it fundamentally misses the point. Blasphemy, let’s say, in Iran, would certainly not involve the Last Supper.

The scene made sense only because of Christianity’s now diminishing position of power but it's a position of power, nonetheless. When you align Jesus Christ with the status quo, with the corridors of power, when Christianity becomes moral wallpaper to an entire civilisation and its culture, it unsurprisingly becomes a target for satire. Especially for anyone or any group that feels persecuted or marginalised. I’m not for a moment defending what Jolly did but trying to understand why it happened.

The last supper, the meal Jesus shared with his friends the night before his crucifixion, was the opening ceremony of Christianity.

The kind of cultural power Christianity has had in the West comes at the cost of clarity because Christianity was itself originally a counterculture. Crucifixion, a supreme act of imperial domination, became the foundation of Christian thought and ultimately its greatest symbol. The original Christian movement was seen itself to be blasphemous for contradictory reasons by both the Jewish and Roman religious leaders of the time.

The fundamental difference between Christianity and merely holding conservative values that should not be transgressed, is God. It was genuine belief in Jesus Christ as the long-awaited messiah of the Jewish people and the Saviour of the whole world - a belief that led his first bedraggled and bewildered disciples to live in such radical and counter-cultural ways that many were killed by the Roman Empire.

It is right for his followers today to speak up and say how wrong it is when the special and sacred things he did for them are yet again trampled on in public, but it's also worth remembering that’s how the story started - with Jesus’ body brutalised and broken. That somehow, in moments like this, we miss the power of Jesus when we simply defend him on grounds of “decency” and “respect.” Instead, if we return to the original events themselves, Jolly’s depiction, in its mockery and subversion, actually reveals the power of The Last Supper.

Da Vinci’s painting was not intended for a gallery but was originally painted on the wall of a fairly obscure monastery, transported to a gallery years later to become primarily art, it is more a foundational aid to the faithful to remember the original events Da Vinci is depicting.

The last supper, the meal Jesus shared with his friends the night before his crucifixion, was the opening ceremony of Christianity. Every time a Christian takes Holy Communion - the central act of Christian worship for over 2,000 years - they remember the opening ceremony where:

“Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins”

The most peculiar part of the opening ceremony of Christianity - more peculiar than any sight we saw last night - is the presence of Judas. The biblical accounts describe Jesus’ knowledge of Judas’ intentions to betray him to the Romans, and yet Judas is still welcome to the table. If there’s space for Judas, then there is space for all of us. The opening ceremony Christianity cannot be remembered without the presence of Judas the betrayer, and Peter the coward or Thomas the doubter. The great irony and the big mystery of the Christian Faith is that you can’t out-sin grace. You can mock it and subvert it, but Christ died for the ungodly.

Last night’s scene doesn’t come close to the original events. Not only was Jesus betrayed by his friends, he was then tortured, humiliated and executed publicly in just about the most excruciating way humans have devised. That was blasphemy of another level, but it was also victory because God was choosing to love inclusively beyond any human metric.

Tom Holland may be right that no part of western culture has escaped Christian influence, but I want more than a little downstream influence.

This means that there’s nothing more inclusive than the opening ceremony of Christianity and yet, at the same time, nothing more exclusive. It is not us who provide the food but God. In Jolly’s performance, the Last Supper scene was concluded by the French actor Philippe Katerine, emerging painted head to toe in blue. Whilst this bearded smurf caused baffled sniggers across the planet, Katherine was apparently representing Dionysius, The Greek god associated with wild drunken parties. The food on offer by Jolly is wild desire and self-expression. In Christianity the food is God himself, his body and his blood. God’s love is given not simply expressed, even to those who will betray him.

Moments like this will become harder for Christians to navigate. It feels like just as a wave of secular liberalism wants to finally vanquish the power position Christianity has painted for centuries, a new conservative vanguard of resistance is rising to protect or enrol it for its own means. From the mouth of Modi or in Trump’s tirades, a new religiously armed populism is raging. Tom Holland may be right that no part of western culture has escaped Christian influence, but I want more than a little downstream influence.

Take us back to the opening ceremony, to the foundation of Christian faith. Take us to the waterfall, where the torrent flows straight down from the mountain, and save us from the slow-moving sludge of the wide river downstream. Take me back to the opening ceremony of Christianity. To the table where God welcomes a Judas like me, to the meal where the master became a servant and washed his followers' feet. Take me back to eat food I could never afford and wine I could not create.