Plenary, 05 Nov 2003

Meeting date: Wednesday, November 5, 2003

Official Report 441KB pdf

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Time for Reflection

Good afternoon. Our time for reflection leader today is the Rev Dr David Sinclair, the convener of the Scottish Network for Civilian Peace Service.

The fifth of November is synonymous with fireworks and bonfires. While it is entirely a good thing that these days we no longer tend to burn human effigies on top of bonfires, the fact that we do not has helped to distance us further from the reason why 5 November is celebrated in this way. It is celebrated, or should be, because the pursuance of a political agenda by violent means was thwarted.

When the World Council of Churches decided that the years 2001 to 2010 should be a decade to overcome violence, it was under no illusion either that violence would, at the end of the decade, be a thing of the past; or that violence was not still seen by many in our world as a legitimate way to pursue political objectives. Rather, the decade is meant to be a way of concentrating minds on the place that violence still has in our politics, our hearts and our minds.

Gunpowder plots are far from being the only kind of violence to which we fall prey. In fact, because they are so obvious, so blatant and so desperate, they are far from being the worst violence that we have to face. They often represent the violence of those who have lost hope, and have no stake or interest in the future.

The violence of the powerful against the powerless seldom needs to be that blatant. The poor in our own country have violence done daily to their chances and their dreams. The poor of the world are ground down by trade rules that favour the rich; the vulnerable of the world are bought, sold and trafficked by those for whom the threat of violence is enough. Those whose schools are closed, houses demolished, crops burned, roads blocked, and movements curfewed, know violence when they see it, and subjugation when they experience it.

Those who put down the gunpowder plot were not themselves averse to a bit of political violence—they were just better at it. The powerful are always better at violence than are the powerless.

So if you attend a fireworks party this evening, I pray that you do so remembering the futility of violence; remembering its hopeless victims; remembering how they are yet tempted, every now and then, to see an explosion as an answer to their oppression; and remembering the God-given task of politics—to provide a better answer and a better way.