Ep.77 - Democracy and the Church

Because the audience clearly can't get enough democracy content, Ben, Adam, and Jonny reunite to pick up the conversation where they left off in Episode 62. This time they ask the question 'how democratic are our churches really?' Along the way, they detour into some sci-fi beef and discuss anti-apartheid activist, Steve Biko, for Saint of the Week.

Clip from Cry Freedom (1987) © Universal/Marble Arch, used under UK fair dealing for criticism/review.

Transcript

Please note: This transcript will likely contain many errors, but is offered for the help it may be.

Hello, and welcome to Bread and Rosaries, The UK based leftist Christian podcast built on a foundation of care, friendship, and love. I'm Ben Molyneux-Hetherington. I'm joined by Adam Spiers and Jonny Bell. Say hi, Adam. 
 
 Hello, friend.
 
 Say hi, Jonny. Hello. And on the basis that we're built on care, friendship, and love, and you've just said hello, friend, I I just want to bring something out that I'm a little confused by. Neither of you have asked me for my new address, so you can send me my birthday presents for tomorrow. So I don't know if you're doing, like, a different thing that you don't need to send or maybe spoken to Sarah about the address.
 
 I don't know. I just wonder what was happening there. Like I mean, I I use the term friend in a very sort of generalised sense. Right? Like, instead of saying, you know, brother, you know, it it's yeah.
 
 In terms of Well, like like how, like how Jeremy Corbyn said, our friends in Hamas that time. Okay. So you see me how Jeremy Corbyn sees Hamas. Yes. And do you think Jeremy Corbyn bought Hamas a birthday present?
 
 That's the question. Well, clearly, he's a terrorist sympathiser. Right? So Yeah. Yeah.
 
 Yeah. Ben, I have a very important question for you. Uh-huh. Where was my gift last week? So it was my birthday.
 
 Literally a week ago today. Ben is the gift. Ben is the gift. Happy birthday, Jonny. I have no idea it was your birthday because I don't, like, I don't use Facebook, and that's mostly good.
 
 But, like, obviously, the thing Facebook was exceptionally useful for was it would tell you when people's birthdays were. I have to say, like, Ben, you are, like, remarkably consist I mean, I think it's mostly your wife, but you are remarkably consistent with my birthday. And, admittedly, my birthday is three days after Christmas, so it's quite easy to remember. Yeah. Yeah.
 
 But I do appreciate that. And I will say, actually, it is it isn't Sarah at all. It is me. I am. I am.
 
 Really? Yeah. Yeah. So I I check my diary, like, every few days for for for upcoming events, including birthdays in the next few weeks. So they are these are well, there's one of the things that I, like, one of those little little things, and I send people birthday cards.
 
 And although I don't get birthday cards myself, people people really like them. As in not that I don't get them, I, like, receive them. I mean, I don't super understand why people like them, but people seem to like them. Yeah. I mean, I'm I'm almost considering upgrading you to actual friend status.
 
 That's delightful. You are now in my diary. In May, it will tell me that it's Jonny Brackett's podcast birthday Nice. Just to identify you properly. I couldn't put your full name in, but instead, you will be known as Jonny Podcast.
 
 It would have been sure, sir, to put my full name in. It should be. Today, we're gonna talk not about people's birthdays, but instead, we're gonna do a follow-up conversation about about democracy. We recorded an episode some time ago about about democracy. And I say some time ago because, this this episode may sit in our vaults for a little while.
 
 So if you're listening to this and you don't be personally and you think, but Ben's birthday was months ago, Then that's that's why if you listen to us, you know, yeah. Ben's birthday was last week. It means something went wrong and we released it much sooner than we're expecting. Now I have to keep all of that birthday nonsense in the edit. You have to get all of it in.
 
 You can cut most of it. So, yes, today we're gonna talk a little bit about about democracy, particularly in relationship to churches. You two didn't necessarily talk democracy a little while ago. That is, we left kinda open to talk a follow-up episode, and then we left a long time to do the follow-up episode, but we are we are back now. Let's look at democracy again.
 
 But before we get into that, we will start, as always, with what else is on my mind, grapes? What else is on my mind grapes? So on my mind grapes, I have been watching, Andor, the the Star Wars TV show, and I toyed with an intro that, was Star Wars based. And, like, we were gonna be the podcaster believed that, Star Wars was better before they do all the politics stuff in it, but I couldn't quite make it, make it work. I'm I'm not just I'm not gonna talk about Star Wars.
 
 Don't worry. Although, Adam, do you remember going to see the, The Force Awakens? Yeah. I do. I do.
 
 Yeah. And, the was it View in Exeter? Yeah. Yeah. We went to I dragged Adam along to the midnight show end of the new Star Wars.
 
 It was, a a great excitement to me, and Adam just tolerated being dragged along to it, I think. Yeah. I mean, I like Star Wars to a point. I just the thing is I've always been you know, there's always been this sort of weird, and there's no reason why it should be really, but there's always been this kind of weird rivalry between Star Wars and Star Trek. And I'm very much more a Star Trek fan, not the reboots, their shit.
 
 Mhmm. Then I have been a Star Wars fan. So it took me a while to sort of get into Star Wars, but, you know, it was fine. I mean, it was also who was the main person in that one? Daisy Ridley, you mean.
 
 That's right. Daisy Ridley. There's I I I don't mean this to be mean to her specifically. I don't know anything about her. But I'm also just I also just find the fact that every single actor these days is just, especially if they're British, just posh kind of privately educated wankers getting every single role.
 
 And yeah. And so it it grates on me a little bit, particularly because she's playing someone who's, like, I don't know, like an orphan and, like, been raised in the desert being, like, harsh. And she's like, oh, hello. You know? Just come on.
 
 Just just be serious. I mean, the arts generally are like that, but they weren't always like that. Right? No. They've become more like that in the last twenty years.
 
 Yeah. Absolutely. The music is another one where you see this more and more. Right? Like, the percentage of private school educated people making music is Yeah.
 
 Which is crazy because actually, it's cheaper and easier to make music than it ever has been. But arts and humanities, certainly in the academy, they're reserved for those who already have money. Right? Because the only ones who can actually afford because all the funding's been withdrawn. The only ones who can actually afford to make a go of it are people who have already got money.
 
 And so they plow all the money into STEM because they want more and more people to make bombs. But if you actually want to affect the culture, they want you to come from money. Yeah. And I think there's, things like rent prices and cost of living also feeds into that because if you're struggling to survive, you're not gonna have the capacity to be able to create and be creative. And actually things like particularly in London because that's where a lot of the arts are regardless of whether you like it or not.
 
 I mean, rent prices are ridiculous. Like, I mean, I was in uni there nearly twenty years ago, and even then, it was expensive. So old, Jonny. So old. I'm 37 now.
 
 Wow. Middle aged, hurtling towards you. Well, I suppose I mean, technically, yeah, 74, is probably a good life expectancy for me with my health problems. So, anyway, that was to go back to what I was actually on my mind grapes because we have classically diverted. I've been watching, Andor, the Star Wars TV show, which is excellent.
 
 I don't know if you do have watched it, but you should watch it. And, you shouldn't give any money to Disney. There are ways and means of watching these things, because I knew Adam would immediately tie me off for getting Disney money. I assure you I'm not. But one of the things that I see back is I've seen a lot of reaction to there's been a couple of scenes where someone has encountered another character that they either haven't met before or have spent limited time on screen with and acted with kind of care and compassion and, like, loyalty and all this sort of stuff.
 
 And I've seen kind of people go, oh, that that was weird. We've never seen those two before. Why are they suddenly mates? And it made me think about the language of comradeship and, actually, how we don't necessarily have the language understanding of of a relationship that is that is comrade. And I think, actually, what, you know, what these people were not getting was that those weren't acts of friendship.
 
 They were acts of comradeship. Right? Like and, you know, that is me kinda reaching beyond I don't know. I don't know what if that was the intention of the show or whatever. But it did make me think about actually how that is a form of relationship with other people that seems to be absent from our collective understanding of how to relate to other human beings.
 
 Is Andor the, sort of set in the rebellion period? Yeah. Yeah. So they're all like, you could I mean, they're essentially terrorists at this point. It's pretty great.
 
 Like Freedom fighters. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
 
 Something really funny about the show is that they do these interviews, I think, partially out of a sense of not wanting to be, like, tied down to one specific thing and partially because Disney told them to, rather writers and directors, whatever, are like, no. This isn't about one specific, like, event. This isn't like you know, we're we're drawing on lots of different historical things and how oppression and rebellion take place. And then, you know, the the main, like, center point of season two is is about a planet being, prepped for genocide using propaganda before they commit the genocide in order to get the natural resources there. And I will keep plot line as a politician, being brave enough to say, hey, this is actually a genocide.
 
 And it's like, I can see why you keep saying this, but there was no one in the world watching this and not immediately thinking about Gaza. Like, this is so obviously about that. Woke nonsense. Yeah. Yeah.
 
 But, yeah, I I think it's quite interesting. You know? I think I've seen other places where actually relating to someone you don't know or maybe even someone you know a bit and maybe don't like very much, but they are still on your side, that they are still a comrade is is something that I think maybe is lost a little bit to us culturally. And I think it's actually a really important form of relationship to hold on to. But I feel like that sense of camaraderie wouldn't have been lost on our communities, sort of, fifty years ago.
 
 I think there has been this kind of, yeah, division and and and things have been we have been sort of made into different areas and divided from each other and don't really have a sense of community anymore, perhaps intentionally, perhaps side effect of of modern life, who knows. But yeah, and I think people fifty years ago probably would have recognised that camaraderie much more readily than they do now, whereas today, we think, oh, I only I'm only like that with people who I know and know well rather than thinking, you know, this is just how I treat people. So let's move on now to our main topic of the day where we're gonna talk about democracy all over again. It was way back was it episode 62, I think it was, that we last spoke about democracy? An episode that I wrote the notes for and then had to leave or wasn't able to join because I was, stuck at work, which meant that the two of you were there.
 
 And I listened back to the episode, and you were very rude to me and and very mean. And also in my absence, Adam got to talk a lot of anarchist bullshit about how democracy isn't good actually. He basically went through the notes and was like, yeah. You can tell Ben's not an anarchist because he's like, yeah. Democracy is good, but I hate it.
 
 I think I was a bit more nuanced than that. Yeah. You were. But, and, actually, we talked a bit a bit there about how democracy functions as an ideology and what different definitions of democracy be. You know, I wrote in the notes about that thing about actually people ask when you hear you're a communist, don't you like democracy?
 
 And my answer would usually be, I do. One day, I hope to live in one. And, you know, actually, people think of The UK as a democracy, but, I mean, on the most basic level, is it a democracy? We've got an unelected head of state. Half legislature is unelected.
 
 And then there's questions about democratic control of work, of media, of all this sort of stuff. So, yeah, we we complicated democracy a little bit last time, in in helpful ways. And I think we wanted to talk about democracy as it relates to the church this time. And I think particularly some of the questions about how churches use the language or idea of democracy to push certain ideas or ideologies or even just to to further their own power. Yeah.
 
 I mean, I think we are in a something of a unique position in this country in having and I'm gonna talk about one of my pet topics again. But we we have an established church. Right? We we are officially a Christian country, and that brings with it certain ideas around democracy, certain ideas about the church's relationship with democracy that are massively ideological. So the way the church interacts with the state, the way the church functions as an arm of the state, and within that as something that is there to perpetuate a very specific idea of democracy, is is kind of plainly obvious.
 
 But it's also when you sort of extend that beyond the Church of England. The Church of England often sets the tone for ideas that churches have around politics, around how to deal with politics, how we should be thinking about politics, including the concept of democracy, which I think is reflected in the fact that whenever something happens like, you know, someone important politically dies or someone gets a nice shiny new hat that signifies that they are now your overlord, the responses of various churches mirror that of the Church of England. Right? They're always very, very positive or, you know, what whatever the Church of England is saying is that more or less just reflected by other churches, whether it be the Methodist church, the URC, even some of the more sort of radical ones like and I don't know that there's a question as to whether it even counts as a church these days, but Quakers, you know, will put out statements so they'll be very radical on on some things, on on things like pacifism, for example, on, whether you can call that radical, but, you know, very anti war. But, actually, they're still aligned with the, sort of overarching ideological presuppositions that we have in a liberal representative democracy.
 
 Yeah. Absolutely. And I think it's it's interesting to me that you see every church put out a kind of bland, inoffensive call for voting whenever a general election comes along. You know? No one ever says even something as relatively milk toasters, don't vote for reform.
 
 They're a bunch of dickheads. Right? That is you know? Or don't vote for reform. They are antithetical to the teachings of Christ.
 
 Like, no one's even brave enough to put that out. It is a very insipid kind of boilerplate statement about the importance of voting, encouraging Christians to be involved, encouraging to take part, maybe something about what a how lucky we are to be in a situation where things are democratic. I hate that one. I hate that one so much. It's just so sold out to the the way things are.
 
 I find it very frustrating. I've been trying to think, as you're saying that, why that's the case. Because obviously in in in the society you're in, you're shaped by the things happening. Your subjectivity is shaped by what's going on. When I read the gospel, like, or parts of the bible, that really goes against a lot of those kind of milk toast ideas and I don't I really I I I there is a real dissonance, and you see it in people that they want to do these radical things, but there is something stopping them.
 
 And is that because they don't want to lose power, they don't want to lose comfort, they don't want to upset and therefore not please other people, They don't feel like they can. I don't know. I don't really know what it is because whenever you read the gospel and certainly whenever I am doing my services and I'm kind of saying like, I think think I've been now starting to say, no. We need to tax the rich. And people are like, yes.
 
 We do. But nothing happens. It's because you should be saying that we need to eat them. I think that's interesting though is is, you know, that your point is that church is reflective of the society that it's in. Right?
 
 And the society that we're in thinks of politics in a pretty milquetoast way. Like, even the most well, actually, liberal people are not going to go for the most radical things because they're liberals. Right? And the church is a very no matter what denomination you're in, by and large, especially the white church, is a very middle class institution. Right?
 
 And the middle classes kind of have it nice. And even if you see that there are people suffering under this system, you know, you the the most you're gonna get in any of these churches is a nod to the kind of anti capitalism that is actually only anti a particular form of capitalism, not capitalism itself. Yeah. Absolutely. I think I find it interesting the way that there's kind of a mirroring here where the forms of democracy that are practiced within a lot of churches on one surface level.
 
 You know? Maybe you go along to a a an annual meeting at council. You elect, you know, certain people to certain roles, you know, whether that's church wardens in the Church of England or whether you you have some sort of trustee system or elders. You know, there are not all churches. Some churches are more specific about how power is utilized there.
 
 But but in most churches, at the very least, because they have to have trustees, because for the charity commission to register as a charity, there'll be some sort of democratic or democratic seeming process by which people are given certain roles in the church. And what I found interesting about that is on the surface level, that looks really democratic. But as anyone who's been to any of these meetings seen in reality, almost all of these positions are uncontested. Everyone knows who's getting that role beforehand. And, actually, if democracy is not just about giving people an occasional vote, but instead about the people who make up a community having genuine actual power over the way things are done that they can exercise with, you know, with some level of ease that that there are not major barriers in the way of them exercising that power.
 
 That these are not really democratic institutions, actually. And I think you see a very similar thing. You know? People talk about revolutions being fundamentally undemocratic, but a mass revolution that represents the will of the people can be a more democratic thing than a very closed system of parliamentary democracy, which only allows certain options and doesn't give people the opportunity to vote for what they actually believe in. So I think if we expand our concept of democracy to think about more about power and where it lies and whether the members of a community do in fact have power over and within that community, then we can start to see that a lot of what passes for democracy, both in the church and in our country at large, isn't actually particularly democratic.
 
 I I want to slightly complicate the sort of church council thing that you are saying there. Yeah. I do think that there's sometimes it's a foregone conclusion for who's gonna do what and how people use that power. But I think there's also another aspect that is reducing the efficacy of of that sort of democratic or that shared power idea is that there is an increasing level amount of of of admin and governance that churches are expected to do, which is really certainly in my context, it's a real thing that's that's making the churches struggle, because there's for for all of the roles, there's almost this professional level, of of of work that's expected by the charity commission, of these people who are sort of 70, 80 years old. They're doing it as a volunteer thing.
 
 And, I mean, it often falls on me needing to to do it because they just can't. And I think that's another real issue, which is actually another symptom of of capitalism itself, of this ever increasing amount of administration and and governance and complicated processes, that are required of people. But that that, I think, really chides against people from being able to have ownership of that and I also find as a result they see the level of work that's required and the level of responsibility that's required and they're like no I I I've been retired for years, I've only got a few years left to live kind of thing, I don't want to be involved with that. You know? So and so over there can do it for me.
 
 Particularly when you've got a full time minister. Right? Like, it becomes really easy to give the full time minister responsibility for because, you know, you're going, well, actually, this is complicated and difficult and you do this for work. Right? Yeah.
 
 Indeed. And I understand it, whereas they don't. And they also don't have access to computers and the Internet, which is often required. You know, I'm working with really quite sort of, yeah, rural communities that struggle with this. And it's deeply frustrating because it gets in the way of being church.
 
 It gets in the way of people actually doing things. They're spending, you know, I I am I'm not I'm I'm an administrator almost primarily as my role at the moment because there is just so much to do and that's not that's not being church. And I've all I always thought that I I just wish that churches were I wish there was a bit more of a drive to see part of the role of if you're gonna have ordained ministers, to see part of that role we often talk about delegation. Oh, we need to delegate this. We need to delegate that.
 
 But, actually, why can't part of the role of a an ordained minister be around facilitating forms of direct democracy within the church and potentially within the community? Right? I I recognize at the moment that, you know, it's it's hard to get to the stage of even thinking about that because, a, peep it's not on people's radars, and, b, it's just too much work on at the moment. There's too much work on your plate, so you can't really get to the point of trying to to change things in that direction. But, ultimately, that could have the effect of, obviously, democratizing the decisions, you know, making it genuinely truly reflective of where people overall want to be, taking some of that power away from ordained ministers and because, I mean, I know that sometimes it might feel like you don't have a lot of power as an ordained minister, but, you know, ultimately, you you do even I mean, I've said this before, but Justin Welby talked about not having a lot of power.
 
 You know, he didn't really have that much power. People thought he did. And it's like, mate, you talk to prime ministers and monarchs, like, if not on a daily basis, then very, very frequently. That is what power is. You know?
 
 But similarly, you know, as as I say, on a local level, there's still some power, still some, kind of authority that ordained ministers have. And I think it's about trying to implement something whereby you give that power away, but actually to the point where you don't even need to continue giving that power away. Right? You transition to something where, you know, hopefully, for the most part, you're you're no longer occupying a position of power. Yeah.
 
 And I think I mean, I I try to do that, I think. And I'm also quite explicit about my power. I will name it, and and and actually say it to people. And I think it's quite helpful naming those things. Yeah.
 
 I didn't want this to sound like I was accusing you personally, Jonny. Not so. Even though I am. I know. I know.
 
 Because the Methodist church in theory can be very democratic. So anyone who's a church member can be on the church council. And certainly with the size of my churches, that could be everyone if if if they wanted. But again, it goes back to the not wanting that level of work. So one of the things in my churches, and I'm sure it's fine me talking about it, so it's not a confidential thing.
 
 Certainly isn't anymore. But it's it's a well known thing in the community that people have been struggling with. That and it may seem really, like, insignificant, but for the church, it is. Whether to take out the preaching, pulpit out. And it's it's one of those ones with stairs either side and Take out preaching.
 
 Take out preaching. That that would democratize it. That would and it was turning into a big thing. So I decided to have a meeting and and and sort of naming the thing that actually this is how we use the church, this is the issue. It's it's not whether we keep a a pulpit or not.
 
 It's how we use the church, how we are church, how we express it in this town, etcetera etcetera. And so having a discussion about mission but then also going right this is a really charged topic we're going to talk about whether we're going to keep the lectern or not. We weren't making a decision that day and we still haven't made a decision but I sort of said to them how are we going to prevent this from getting out of hand and so that everyone can say their what they want to say but also enable everyone to be able to be heard and put it to the room. They decided on the process that every person would say what they wanted and it literally just go round almost like a talking stick type thing. Literally just go around the room and people can speak uninterrupted and it moves on to the next person when they're ready.
 
 And that sort of thing I think works really well because it gets the people who don't talk very often to talk. It gets the people who do a lot of talking to listen and it enables that shared power to happen. I know power dynamics and relationships are more complicated than just that, but that is one tool for enabling that power to be more shared. It's it's the starting point that, isn't it? Chris Housen, when he was on before, talked about, and this was more in a sort of church like service context, but he talked about this idea of having a a point at the start of the service where everyone is encouraged to speak into the space because it allows people to feel take some kind of ownership over that sort of collectively and feel that they can say things going forward.
 
 And I know from my own experience living with a bunch of, anarchists, we would often start with something similar, and then it meant that we were all able to sort of chip in. And we had, like, other systems as well, like hand signals and and so on. But, but it did mean that the discussion then, which was facilitated so it didn't have to be, you know, super long, it it meant that the discussion was able to flow more freely. So I think we'll take a a a pause there, and we'll return in a minute to the topic of democracy and how that might look in churches, and what resources you might find in kind of the bible and theology regarding democracy. But before we do that, let's have a little look at this week's saint of the week.
 
 Saint of the week. Adam, I believe that you have a saint that I'm hoping is a human and not a dog. He is a human. He? Ugh.
 
 How disappointing. Well, I hope you feel really bad when I tell you about this person and what they did and what happened to them, Ben. I mean, I'm disappointed that they're human. So I'm a little bit surprised that we haven't done this person before, but I think there's a good reason for that. So this week, I wanna talk about Steve Biko, who you may well have, come across before.
 
 He's a very well known name in the anti apartheid movement, and you may have seen the film about his life, Cry Freedom, which came out in 1987. And it's based on a biography written by a friend of his. So Steve Vico was born in 1946 in Eastern Cape. He was the third of four children. His dad was initially a police officer and then later on was like a a clerk in a a court or something like that.
 
 And his mom was a domestic worker. But his dad died when he was four years old, in 1950. So his mom had had to raise him and his siblings from then on. And Steve Biko said that observing his mother's hardship is what politicized him. So he was raised as an Anglican, as all good people are, and he grew up in Ginsburg Township, which was kind of a a mixed community.
 
 So we're talking at this time. Apartheid, I think, came in I think it was in 1948. One of the things of apartheid that I'm not sure people sort of realize these days, particularly if you're not South African, you don't know about it, and, actually, you know, a lot of white South Africans kind of don't know about it anyway, is that people when apartheid came in, people were put into Bantustans, so one of 10 communities, and they were essentially ethnically cleansed and put into these areas where they essentially were they had to had to stay. And if they wanted to travel, so we're talking about black people. Right?
 
 If they wanted to travel, they had to have their passport with them at all times. These were some of the biggest forced resettlement in the twentieth century. Thousands and thousands, if not millions, of people were moved to these Bantustans. Right? And there were 10 of them, and some of them were sort of essentially treated as sort of de facto states in their own right.
 
 But, of course, they existed within the South African state ruled by the white minority, and so conditions were appalling. So Steve Biko, this is this is the the context that Steve Biko is is growing up in. He was very, very smart. He skipped a grade in primary school despite the fact that his teachers described him as kind of a bit naughty, a bit cheeky. But he just everything seemed to come to him very, very easily.
 
 He later on, though, went to a school called Lovedale, which was sort of a liberal school. And this played a big part in his in his politicization as well. So in 1964, police raided Lovedale to arrest his brother for ties to, an illegal African nationalist group, but both brothers were arrested. And despite the fact that there was no evidence against Steve, he was nevertheless expelled from the school after only three months of of going there. And this, he said, really is what gave him a strong resentment towards white authority, and and authority in general.
 
 He said, I began to develop an attitude, much more directed at authority than at anything else. I hated authority like hell. And then he, goes in and completes his schooling in a different college. And at this college, he really deepens his anti apartheid convictions, and he starts to look at figures outside of South Africa in struggles that that mirrored those. So, you you know, your obvious ones like Malcolm x, who was sort of big around this time as well, but, Ben Bella and Odinga from Kenya as well.
 
 When he goes to university, he joins the National Union I can't remember what he's called. NUSAS, but a union of, students that are supposedly integrated, even though there's you know, it's difficult to make that happen. And he is elected to the students representative council. So that's the National Union of South African Students, right, which is a nominally non racial student body. But during a congress in 1967, black delegates were segregated.
 
 They were sent to go and sleep in the church, whereas the white delegates slept in dormitory housing. And so Biko and others walked out in protest, and this is where he really starts to be critical of white liberal non racism. Right? Because, actually, it's not anti racist. It just goes along with it more or less.
 
 And he he later wrote that he began to feel that there was a lot lacking in the proponent proponents of the non racist idea. They took us for granted. Our understanding of our situation was not coincidental with that of these liberal whites. And so in response, he and a load of other black students formed an independent student organization. And this organization, which was called the South African Students' Organization, was a blacks only organization, which was not to say that Biko was and he did get stick from, various sides for this.
 
 He wasn't saying that white people were bad or shouldn't be involved in the struggle or had no place in a future South Africa. He was saying that the way these organizations were constituted at that time meant that they were largely run basically by white people. So you have white people perpetuating apartheid and the main opponents of that were also white people. And he felt that black people needed to build up their own self confidence, that they needed to realize. And when his he popular like, his favorite phrase was black is beautiful because he felt that black people had just been made to think in a way that saw blackness itself as, you know, lesser.
 
 So he founds this or co founds this this movement, and actually, a broader movement starts to take shape from this and from other organizations that are formed as well called Black Consciousness. In 1971, the manifesto for, the SASO said black consciousness is an attitude of mind, a way of life. The basic tenet is that the black man must reject all value systems that seek to make him a foreigner in the country of his birth and reduce his basic human dignity. And he was really influenced by, people like Franz Fanon and Malcolm X in in this. Initially, the apartheid government was quite supportive of this because they wanted people to be organizing in along racialized lines.
 
 Right? And so they were a bit slow off the mark to what was actually going on here. But they fairly quickly came to realize that this was really, for their from their point of view, quite dangerous, particularly as the movement began to grow and expand beyond university campuses. You know, they started to run community clinics, literacy programs, and other projects in townships, which, of course, is, you know, when you start addressing things like poverty, becomes a a real problem for for those in power who want that kind of thing to to continue. And so the apartheid regime started to respond more forcefully.
 
 Biko, at this time, was studying to become a doctor. He was at med school. But he ended up being expelled from medical school because his political work was taking up a lot of his time and and energy, but also, you know, he was bearing the brunt of a lot of the negative stuff that fell out from that. And so he he was expelled from medical school. I think he had to repeat a year and then was expelled.
 
 And then in 1973, the minister of justice gave a five year banning order, which confined Steve Biko to his hometown. He wasn't allowed to leave his hometown. And and there were, some other activists who also were banned to their hometowns as well. But Steve, along with others, but Steve would just frequently ignore this ban, and just go and travel and talk to massive groups of people because the movement is growing and growing at this point. And in 1974, the ban was defied to celebrate Mozambique's independence, And the police raided offices, detained 200 activists, charged 13 under the terrorism act, and Biko testified as a defense witness, for these people, which was his first public speech since being banned and where he got to talk about, black consciousness.
 
 And there's a wonderful scene in cry freedom, the film I talked about before, where you you see this happening. My lord, blacks are not unaware of the hardships they endure or what the government is doing to them. We want them to stop accepting these hardships, to confront them. People must not just give in to the hardships of life. They must find a way, even in this environment, to to develop hope, hope for themselves, hope for this country.
 
 Now I think that is what black consciousness is all about. Now, without any reference to the white man to try and build up a sense of our own humanity, our legitimate place in the world. After the trial, he continued his underground activism. And, in March 1977, he and some colleagues were briefly arrested, but were released after it gained public attention. But then in August 1977, he traveled to Cape Town secretly to negotiate unity, among exiled and banned black activists, but the police intercepted him and his companion on a train and arrested them.
 
 And he was detained in Pretoria on under terrorism charges. So that was August 16. And by September 12, he had died in a police hospital cell, having been beaten and tortured by the police officers. And, obviously, this is treated again in the film with with you know? It's it's it's a it's a film that you really must see, because part of it was that they could have taken him to a nearby hospital, but they refused to take him to that one, stuck him in the back of a a van, and drove him for miles to go to to that one, which really finished him off.
 
 So in the wake of his death, obviously, you know, this outraged people in South Africa, but it outraged the the world. It got a lot of interest, and was one of the driving forces of the the sort of later anti apartheid movement. Now, I haven't spoken a lot about his religious views, but they're really quite interesting. So I said he was raised Anglican, but his approach to religion started to become more critical and more complicated. He never rejected Christianity, but he was very critical certainly of organized Christianity of the church, and he also drew from sort of African religious concepts.
 
 But he also was kind of nodding towards that he kind of doing liberation theology because, of course, liberation theology at this time is is really kicking off, especially in South America. But there wasn't that wasn't the only place doing liberation theology. Liberation theology was happening elsewhere, He said He said that missionaries, Christian missionaries in South Africa have been some of the first people to really listen to and understand people in South Africa, but that they had preached a theology of hell, right, which had just tried to scare people into believing their religion. And he said that Christianity was a cold, cruel religion. And that was not him saying it was the wrong religion, but it was him criticizing a kind of Christianity, the the the kind of systematized, organized form of Christianity.
 
 So his his religious belief, he definitely believed in God, but he was kind of unorthodox in his beliefs. He never rejected God. He never really rejected Christianity, which is why I've just sort of about, like, scraped him in here as as a saint of the week. But he was very, very critical of a lot of the ways it kind of looked. He told black churches, God is not in the habit of coming down from heaven to solve people's problems, which is which is interesting because I think there's a a deep truth in that, and yet, how do we frame the incarnation whilst recognizing that deep truth?
 
 You know, some people claim that he was an atheist. Some people claim that he wasn't a Christian. He was probably just an unorthodox Christian. So, yeah, that's Steve Biko, obviously, really important for the anti apartheid movement and really important in challenging church leaders in in South Africa and beyond to see Christianity as a and and remake Christianity as a religion of liberation rather than a religion of the oppressor. Yeah.
 
 It's interesting what you're saying because in some ways, you always feel like there's some context in which the only people that are making it into consideration for saint of the week are ones where people are going, I don't really know if they are actually Christian. Right? Like, actually, you know, you kind of describe it as unconventional, orthodox, whatever. And it's I don't know. In some ways, when when the religion is functioning in that particular way, it's hard not to come across as someone who is opposing that religion or is anti that religion when you're actually being faithful to that that religion.
 
 Yeah. Yeah. A 100%. I mean, I I think I think he was Christian. He didn't go to church, but I I think he was I think he retained a form of Christianity that was nevertheless able to see the value not only in some of the liberating threads within the bible, and within the the the, gospels and and the life of Jesus, which is, by the way, what he he took back.
 
 He said the thing that he was interested in was the revolutionary ideas of the historical Jesus. That's what he said, because he wanted to remake society as a socialist society. Right? So that was that was what he was interested in, but he was also able to draw from some of the more communal ideas that were found in a lot of African religions. So he he didn't just sort of say, as as some Christians will, a lot of Christians will, these are terrible things and pagans, etcetera, etcetera.
 
 He pointed to the the the good stuff that African spirituality often had to offer. And I just think that's a far more, apart from anything, just a far more mature approach to to faith. You know? Yeah. Absolutely.
 
 And one of the things there is is yeah. He didn't go to church, but actually, he was being church. Like, church is not about a building and doing specific rituals, or I know some some people do believe that, but I don't. And the church is people and and God working through those people, for creating change. And the thing you're saying about, the was it the SASO, one of the movements he was doing that was for a black only space?
 
 It's so interesting when you've got an oppressed group and as soon as they want to take up space, there's, like, oh, you can't do that. Like, having their own space to do that and safe space for, yeah, as you say, for for nurturing and and and and sort of building themselves up. And then again, as soon as those movements became politically powerful and threatening the status quo, again, taking up their space, that's when the, yeah, the the, government or whoever were saying, no. You're not allowed to do that anymore. It it is very that pattern.
 
 Yeah. And and I think it's it's it's really interesting because I said that he kind of got it from all sides on on this. And he did. He because he was setting up a blacks only kind of space. And by blacks, what they meant back then.
 
 Right? Because I don't know how if you know how apartheid worked, but it was a system of, there there were four races essentially recognized within South Africa. And there was a hierarchy. Each one was under under the next. So you had, the top of the hierarchy were whites.
 
 Under whites were Indians. Under Indians were what they call coloreds, which is essentially mixed race, but usually black and white people because, you know, one of the things that happened with apartheid is that it became illegal to have relationships between different races. And then at the bottom were were blacks. And that those bottom two coloreds and blacks, were differentiated into subcategories, as well. And so setting up what he called what what they called, in fact, the movement called blacks, he included Indians and, you know, coloreds in into that movement as well.
 
 And so he got it in the neck a little bit from some of those saying, no. It needs to be a, you know, what we would now call a blacks only kind of movement. And he got in the neck from them because even though he was setting up a movement for black people that was exclusionary of white people, He wasn't exclusionary of white people from the overall movement. He had white friends. His biographer was white.
 
 You know? Like, it's that wasn't the issue. It's just that he needed this black consciousness movement to be something that that took effect for black people to be the driving force behind their own liberation. Right? And that then that's a very key principle in in liberation theology as well, which I think we always need to remember.
 
 So he got it in the neck from that side, but then obviously got it in the neck from from the other side, from liberal some liberal whites as well, and from, obviously, the apartheid regime as well. Fantastic. Thank you for sharing that with us. That was, really interesting, and it was good to, learn more about someone I knew of but didn't know a lot about. Sailor of the week.
 
 So let's return to talk a little bit more about churches and democracy. And I guess one of the arguments I've seen that I thought would be interesting to address is this question of, well, actually, Christianity doesn't encourage democracy. You know, if you look at the Bible, there's very little in the way of democracy going on as a kind of method of governance within that context. But also, fundamentally, it's a monarchical religion. Right?
 
 There is God and he he is in charge and Christ is king, and we do what we're told by Christ. So I guess I'm interested in how you two would kind of integrate ideas of democracy into into Christianity when on the surface, at least, it feels like there isn't a natural combination of the two. Well, there's a, to start with, an interesting idea, from Catherine Tanner that actually kind of she argues that it's blasphemous to compare God to human relationships with human to human relationships. So to to to to use God and humanity as our model for structuring ourselves is actually blasphemous because no one is God and we are human so we need to do it differently how God sees it. I mean that that's one perspective.
 
 Not sure I entirely agree with God being so far removed that there is a complete otherness because, obviously, Jesus Christ, etcetera. But, yeah, there there is an interesting thing where you shouldn't compare the the human to human with God to human. I mean, I also think that we so often fall into this trap of imagining that because the Bible talks about monarchy, that therefore that is the only thing that it talks about and everything must be aligned with that. Because the Bible doesn't just talk about monarchy. You know, it's not the only way decisions were made across all time in the bible because the bible, as I will apparently never tire of pointing out, does not speak with a single unified voice.
 
 Right? What? So I I know. I know. I will say, remove this bill.
 
 But, you know, there there are plenty of examples of decision making processes being taken that don't reflect that model. And, of course, there are. Because when you've got a sort of insurgent movement yeah. Insurgent, not necessarily in the kind of sense that some might imagine of of, you know, going around with guns and killing people. But insurgent movement as in like a new movement, of course, decisions are going to be made in slightly different ways, slightly more flexible ways, slightly more communal ways.
 
 You know, in act six, you you see an example of community decision making taking place when they select Deacons. So it's you you can't just sort of point to one thing and say, well, that's that's what it is. You know, prior to the sort of monarchy thing, obviously, you had judges, which were probably not they probably didn't actually have that much power as such. It would have been a sort of tribal chieftain kind of system a bit more, which I'm not suggesting is necessarily democratic, although there might have been elements of democracy within that. But the point is there's a plurality of different ways of organizing reflected throughout the Bible.
 
 So we can't just point to that one that just so happens to be the one that aligns with power you know, and say, well, that's the model then, because it isn't. And I think when we look at the psalmist, when we look at proverbs, you know, when we look at the the wisdom literature, you know, it talks about, many council I can't remember where, but it talks about, like, many councilors. And I think there's a a sort of implicit understanding that things are a little bit more complicated than just having one person making all the decisions. You know? But wise counsel is something that's needed.
 
 Yeah. However, that makes sense. And and I think I think as well about actually the idea of reading and discerning the bible being something that is done communally or done best communally. Right? And even, you know, you look at the history of of the bible.
 
 And without going into, you know, any real depth, the reason that the books of the bible, particularly the New Testament, became, you know, canonized as the as the books of the bible was because a plurality of different people had recognized them as inspired. Right? There was no point where one person despite what you might hear, there was no point at which one person said, I have decided these are the books. And a bunch of Christians went, oh, I've never heard of some of these, but alright. Crack on.
 
 The reason that those books were chosen was because they were already recognized as inspired by a community. And that's not to say that it was strictly democratic in terms of the process of of descending what books were were meant to be in there, but that there was a democratic element because the decision was made based on the community's actual kind of lives and the way they responded to certain texts. Right? And, actually, I think, you know, democracy isn't just voting on what the correct interpretation of of a of a bible passage might be. But, actually, there's something inherently more democratic about a conversation between equals around how to approach the bible, read certain scriptures, what actions to take.
 
 Even if that doesn't culminate in a vote right, if we've got that broader understanding of democracy, there's something inherently democratic about that. So, actually, the the not only does the original kind of providence in the Bible come in some ways from from a kind of democratic process, but, actually, the way we should approach it is best discerned democratically. Yeah. I think so. And I think I would add to that as well, this idea of the church as a body, that we see in the epistles, right, and each each person having a a part within that.
 
 There's something that there's to me, there's an inherently sort of democratic kernel to that. And and also, you know, remember, we're still when the Bible is the New Testament certainly is being written, we're talking about societies that were still really paternalistic, really hierarchical stratified societies. And so you're not necessarily, you know, you're not gonna get people joining the movement whose thinking is perfect straight away. What what you get is new things happening, exciting difference taking place. You know, the fact that you had women for the first time in that society really taking fairly central roles a lot of the time and having a voice.
 
 You know, that is opening things up. And I think if we take that principle of opening things up to its logical conclusion, then we end up somewhere, you know, notwithstanding my, silly, anarchist reservations to the the idea of democracy as we have had it handed down to us, we end up with something that taken to its logical conclusion is incredibly democratic. But could this is me complicating it. Could there be an issue No. Could there be an issue with because if you see God as the sort of central power, so power of centralizing God, therefore those who are closest to God and and bearing in mind that's how the church has understood this for a long time but also the philosophy informing people's understanding of the world was like that when the gospels and letters and everything were written.
 
 So those closest to God were most like God and it was almost this concentric thing going out. So if you've got this centralized power and and those closest to the power are the most holy, good, powerful, whatever. That goes against that democratic idea, surely. Well, that could be one incorrect way of interpreting it. Yeah.
 
 But, yeah. No. I I think my pushback on that would be that actually, I think you're perhaps over egging some of that understanding. It wasn't just that that was the way people saw it. Yeah.
 
 Otherwise, we wouldn't end up with ideas like kenosis. Right? And that is an idea where where god is literally giving away power. Right? And that to me seems to be a fairly fundamental concept at the heart of what is happening on the cross.
 
 Right? And not just on the cross, but at the heart of the incarnation. Right? God comes down and gives away power and and gives power to those who would kill him. Right?
 
 Mhmm. Which is why I I like this idea of, you know, when you go to some churches and they don't say kingdom, they say kingdom. And it can be a bit cheesy, but I really like it, because it's a reframing. We we we use a lot of metaphors and allegories and so on when we're talking about the the gospel that Jesus was proclaiming and that the church was proclaiming, going forward. And we use allegories of war, and we use allegories of, kingship and that kind of thing.
 
 But that doesn't mean that those things are actually, you know, that we that they actually wanted a kingdom as such, that they actually wanted war as such. They they were using them to describe something else. And when we look at the way Jesus frames this kingdom in the Beatitudes, we see something completely topsy-turvy, right? The first will be last, the last will be first. It's equalizing it.
 
 It's leveling it. And that to me is is fairly fundamental to the message that Jesus was preaching. So is there something from what you're saying about that outpouring, that chromatic love, power, etcetera, Something about God facilitates us to have power and that therefore we need to facilitate others to have power. I think if power is something so anarchists will often talk about power because they will often conceive of power as, the thing that the powerful have. Right?
 
 Like, the those in power. And so they will say, like, I mean, I think Benjamin Zephaniah has this sticker sticker has this saying that I have on a sticker, which I kind of love, where he just says, fuck power, you know. And and I and I that resonates with me if you're thinking about power in those ways. But if we want to get all, postmodern about it, which I know you'll love, we can equally see power as something that really I mean, Foucault talks about this where he talks about power being something that is, in in reality, real power is disparate, spread out. Right?
 
 And if we imagine power in that way, where we hold power collectively, then fine. You know, there's there's perhaps something to that. And and when you sort of combine that with with ideas of the kingdom of God, where where God is coming down giving away power, but also facilitating power to be taken by everyone, and in a sense by no one, then why not? Are you sure that fuck power is not just, like, one of the categories on his top Trump's card? Bringing it down to a a a normal level there.
 
 Yeah. You're using lots of big words to about theorists and power and stuff, and all I always go is You communists. You rattle off a lot of fancy words, don't you? This is nice of you, Adam. You get Jonny as a fresh audience for this, the new year in the eclipse.
 
 Yeah. I do. Yeah. Yeah. An interesting thing is that so I think I said in theory, the Methodist church is is quite democratic.
 
 Another thing that the charity commission is kind of doing to sort of erode that democratic way of working is, so we have what's called the conference which is kind of like general synod but far more lay people, who actually have power. And so our our bishop is is the conference, basically, to put it that way. So our our episcopacy is is the conference, and that's made up of two three hundred people. Parisian, remove this bill. And they're all elective representatives from different parts of Methodist Church in Britain and they all have equal voting power.
 
 One of the issues though is the Charity Commission doesn't like the idea of a charity being governed in that way, so they turned around and say you need fewer people. So we have now what's called the connectional council, which is formed of, I think, 20 odd people who are not elected democratically to be in that. Most of them, I think all of them currently are ordained, and quite senior in the church. And they have, you know, the conference is still operating, but the connectional council has the power to override the conference in some ways and make decisions on behalf of the conference. And that's something that the Charity Commission has kind of forced us to have, and I find that really problematic in terms of our ecclesiology, the way we we are church.
 
 And we still don't know what the implications will be because it's it's an evolving process and where it's a kind of you know people say oh it's not going to change much or things will be the same or whatever or it'll be more efficient or whatever but we don't know how it's going to work and we don't know how those individuals are going to use their power and we we we there isn't that level of accountability in the same way either which I think is concerning some people, myself included. So it'll be interesting to see how that evolves and how that changes how we're church. I think these things often have a habit of tech like, trending towards the consolidation of power even when it looks like so there was kind of a I was gonna say similar thing. It's almost the opposite in a sense in that it was they were trying to head towards a more democratic system when the, General Synod of the Church of England was sort of instituted in 1970. Right?
 
 So it replaced the the church assembly, and it ostensibly made it a far more democratic, way of doing things. It created a tricameral system where you had house of laity, house of clergy, house of bishops, and, you know, for each thing that was passed, you had to get, like, 70% in each of the houses. So it was a high bar by by many standards. But I think, essentially, what happened was that you still ended up with a situation where those positions were largely, though not entirely, adopted by people and people were elected who were still very much within the church and within the system. Even the sort of more progressive ones still kind of, I think, like it how it is a lot of the time.
 
 And I wonder whether there might be a similar thing happen with with the Methodist Church. I could well be wrong. But I think often when you you see these changes sort of enforced on people, you still end up sort of trending towards the entrenchment of power, I think. So good luck with that. Just be more like the Anglican church and be completely undemocratic from the start and roll with it.
 
 Like Yeah. Yeah. Totally. I mean, it's it it'll be better. It it'd be better than The rocket system you call communism.
 
 I think that is probably all we have time for now. So thank you both very much, and, thank you for listening. If you would like to get in contact with us, we love to hear from people. If you're watching on YouTube, comment. If you're a normal person who listens to podcasts or then watches them, then, you can, rate and review us places.
 
 You can send us emails. You can get in touch with our social media. Send us a text? You can. All the content details are breadandrosaries.com, and there is a phone number to text us in the, in the show notes.
 
 So have a look at that if you would like to get in touch. Jonny, I believe you are impossible to contact, unless you want to wander the streets of Norfolk. Absolutely. Intentionally so. Yeah.
 
 And, where the welcoming people find you? You can find me most places, TikTok, BlueSky, Instagram at Commiexian. Oh, and YouTube as well on there too. So, yeah, if you wanna contact Adam, that's the way to do it. If you wanna contact Jonny or me, you do have to message us, through the podcast because we will not be, yeah, sharing our personal contact details.
 
 We'll set a Patreon goal, and if you get to it, I'll give you Jonny's phone number. How about that? I thought we weren't gonna have anything behind a paywall, Ben. Yeah. Nothing apart from your personal phone number.
 
 Is someone to give paywall. I was gonna say, we'll give out Jonny's phone number now then. Yeah. Yeah. Alright.
 
 That's fine. It's like a work number, so it's fine. Thank you very much for listening everyone. Thank you both for joining me, and we'll see you next time. Bye bye.
 
 Bye. See you later.