Posted on: 7th November 2024

A flashback to my July blog: “As I write our UK elections have not yet happened and this blog won’t be posted until a week after they take place”. Now I find that, as I write, USA elections have not yet happened and this blog won’t be posted until 2 days after they have taken place!

USA elections happen every 4 years on the first Tuesday in November, so this year they’ll be on November 5th and that got me thinking!

I’m sure it might be construed as rather extreme lateral thinking to connect these upcoming elections to a very British bonfire night, although the Gunpowder Plot of November 5^th 1605 has some resonance with religious and political conflict of our times and the 419 years since then.

I live in Otley. The Parish Church here has a lot of Fawkes memorabilia. The current Fawkes family live just up the road. Guy Fawkes was born in York and christened in St Michael le Belfrey church. When his widowed mother remarried a Catholic in Harrogate, he became Catholic also. Later on he had connections also in Blubberhouses – also just up the road from Otley! He became a fighter which took him to Spain to fight against Protestants in the Franco-Spanish wars. He then joined a group wanting to kill James 6th of Scotland who had also become James 1st of England. As we know, he was discovered beneath the Houses of Parliament with the gunpowder and put to death. Gunpowder Treason Day became a public event with anti-Catholic meaning – and so, gradually, the story has transformed into a firework party!

Oppositional politics showcases again and again how little attempt there is to dialogue and debate, and rather a lot of fireworks! Power and wealth lovers rule through commercial control, and - ‘let’s throw the opposition on the bonfire’! Religious conflict (before and after Guy!) has often been rooted in a desire to defend tradition, rules and hierarchies that are more regarded than the essence of the law of God. Jesus was up against that and got killed for it.

A lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live. But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?” (Luke 10:25-29 ESVUK). You’ll know what followed – the Good Samaritan story - Jesus turned it to ‘who is his neighbour’?

My prayer is that explosive, eruptive situations, and attitudes in public life (as is contemporary this week in the USA), or in our local and personal lives, will be infiltrated, boldly and unashamedly with this essential, Christ Spirit, law of love.

John Simkins, Otley Prayer Network