To Glasgow yesterday evening for a night at the theatre to see Jerry Springer – the Opera. Along with a member of the staff of the General Synod Office, I braved the howling mob of folk outside who were kindly waiting to sing hymns and bellow at us. I joined in the hymn singing as we made our way into the theatre.
Whilst booking the tickets, I asked the staff of the theatre whether there had been any protests. They confirmed that there had been people walking up and down with banners for a week providing what they called "excellent free publicity".
The show itself was excellent. I remain convinced that it is an intensely moral piece. It holds a mirror up to all of us. One of the messages is that the baying crowd of people at the door of the theatre is little different to the studio and TV audience for Jerry Springer.
The central message is that there are no moral certainties. I could understand why folk from some religious traditions might find this utterly objectionable however it seems to be the language and the characters which they object to. The point of it all is that there are no moral certainties so we all need to grow up and take care of one another and of ourselves.
That may not be a restatement of Christian moral theology, but it is a view that millions of people live by, and there are worse ways to live than that.
I was watching the Channel 4 documentary series Dispatches this week, with a show entitled “The New Fundamentalists”, and they featured some people protesting against Jerry Springer: The Opera outside a theatre. The guy leading the demonstration at one point asked the assembled crown how many of them had seen the show, and the vast majority indicated they had not. But yet to him, that seemed good to him. He said something along the lines of: “You don’t have to tred in a cow-pat to know that it’s a bad thing.”