Rather hoping that I don’t find the Cathedral grounds filled up by a tented village of people protesting about something when I go back to work.
I’m trying not to comment too directly upon the internal workings of another cathedral. However, the PR disaster that is St Paul’s does make me want to assert this…
It seems to me that it is mistaken to reject entirely the possibility that a Christian church might involve the police in enforcing the law. I can think of several situations when the rule of law has needed to be applied to church property. For example, I remember a situation when a property owned by a certain religious foundation was taken over by a business going by the name of Sadie’s Massage Parlour and was offering services that went beyond massage that was merely therapeutic. That was a situation where the law needed to be invoked and enforced.
It is also the case that I’ve told anti-gay protesters that they can protest against the church in the street but not on our own land. They were reasonably good-natured and respected that, but I’d have had no hesitation in calling the Police out had they not done so.
Or there was the case when I thought that the person who had walked into church had a bomb in his rucksack just before a BBC broadcast. (It turned out to be a bass clarinet). Personally, I’d have preferred that a burly policeman had dealt with that than me.
Or there was the time when we had death threats made against a preacher and had plain-clothes police in the front row. (As one of the people sitting next to the preacher, I was glad they were there).
I have occasionally had cause to ask the authorities to limit what they proposed to do. For example, I did have to make a request once that, if they were going to arrest someone (someone whom I did certainly believe needed very much to be arrested) then perhaps it would be more appropriate to do so from my office than actually in church. In the end, I’m pleased to say, neither possibility came to pass.
All I’m saying is that the act of involving the police in enforcing the law is not one that I think is always utterly morally reprehensible for Christians defending their people, land or worship. There are obvious questions about whether a course of action is proportionate, but that is another matter.
Absolute values rarely apply.
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