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None of God’s Business?

Mark Greene reflects on the role of business

Every age has a dominant institution – the one that drives all the others. In the Middle Ages it was the Church. In the nineteenth century it was government and in the 21st century it’s business. As Anita Roddick, founder of the Bodyshop put it:

 “I don’t think that anyone would argue that business now dominates the world’s centre stage. It is faster, more creative, adaptable, efficient and wealthier than many governments … So in terms of power and influence you can forget the Church and forget politics, too. There is no more powerful institution in society than business. It is more important than ever before for business to assume a moral leadership in society.”

Oscars for the Academy

Mark Greene finds Hollywood calling us to make a stand.

Last week, a friend of mine resigned from their job. They’d been there over four years.

They didn’t have another job to go to, they don’t have a lot of money in the bank and they aren’t prone to self-destructive, melodramatic gestures. However, the organisation was putting them in a position where they couldn’t do the work in a way that appropriately protected the people they were there to serve. Warnings had been given about falling standards. The warnings had been ignored. So, regretfully, painfully, the resignation letter was written – short, gracious, clear, legally careful.

Hope, Hope, Hurray?

Despite the data, Mark Greene finds reasons to be cheerful

“Woe, woe, three times, woe”, so beat the drums of doom on almost any measure of the social, emotional, physical or mental health of contemporary Britain… overworked, overtired, overspent, overweight, overdrugged … Is there hope for our muddled education system, careening from new initiative to new initiative, desperately trying to claw its way up the EU league tables? Is there hope for our children, the most miserable in the ‘developed’ world? Is there hope for our slave new world of work where the rich do indeed get richer and the rest of us get wearier? Is there hope for our community relations as the mounting fear of Islam builds an ever higher wall, razor-wired with suspicion and resentment on both sides? Is there hope when terrible events like the Bridgend teenage suicides no longer seem to be ghastly anomalies but harbingers of deepening darkness?

The Perdition of Happiness


Mark Greene explores why society in Britain is so miserable.

Oliver James’ new book The Selfish Capitalist, published in January, may prove to be one of the most important books of the year. It explores one of the most pressing problems facing British society in particular, and English-speaking nations in general: why are Britons and Americans and English-speaking nations so much more miserable, indebted, divorce-prone, drug-addicted and obese than our Western European counterparts? And what might we begin to do about it?

But first I need to tell you something: I’m a ‘Tigger’.

The culture of outrage


The British media suggests that Christians are better known for what they are against than what they are for. In an age of supposed religious tolerance, Mark Greene asks, when did we get so angry?

A pope gives a lecture in Europe and nuns are murdered in Ethiopia. A writer publishes a novel and is forced into hiding. A teacher allows her class to name a teddy bear after a popular pupil and a Sudanese crowd call for her death. A Milanese football team wear a strip with a red cross in it at their home ground against a Turkish team and a Turkish lawyer sues them, grieved by the shirt’s similarity to the Templars’ garb and its associations with the Crusades. A company throws a party offering a champagne prize in its raffle and some of the Muslim employees sue them.

With all these people being offended, with all this intensity of response to what for the most part seem rather minor infractions, or no real infraction at all, it is tempting to be outraged oneself. Where is the forbearance in any of this? Where is there any understanding of other peoples’ cultures on the part of those apparently so deeply offended? Where is there any acceptance that others too have an identity, traditions, a God they may love?

Indeed, do not many of us now feel that a policy of appeasement towards minority but vocal, influential, Muslim sensibilities is doomed to failure? On the one hand, we are busy being told that the cross is offensive pretty much wherever it appears. On the other, a section of the Muslim community want to build the biggest mosque in Europe, presumably with a minaret to match and a crescent atop it, right next to the Olympic village. And is anyone allowed to build a church the size of a phonebox in Saudi Arabia? How easy it would be to get into a confrontation about ‘rights’, rather than a conversation about mutual respect, acknowledged difference and community-building.

In this highly combustible atmosphere of intense offence, intimidation and double standards, how are we to live? Skulk away in fear? Get outraged ourselves? Outrage is tempting. After all, feeling offended gets your cause airtime, the deference of politicians and the sympathy of community leaders, so why not get hot under the collar yourself?

Opening Doors and Opening Hearts


Mark Greene discovers the power of badges and titles to open hearts in surprising places.

I’m in a car on my way to Whitworth with a friend. We stop at a crossroads in Rochdale. There on the far side of the road stands The Cemetery Hotel, sombre in its black and gold paint. Given that it’s right across the road from a cemetery, I’m sure the locals don’t give the name a second thought, but to an outsider like me, it has a macabre ring to it, the kind of place you check into, but never check out of, like the motel in Psycho. Who, apart from a vampire, would fancy a night at a Cemetery Hotel, particularly a Cemetery Hotel that is located on the Bury Rd? They probably promise you the longest night’s sleep you’ll ever have. And don’t have a breakfast menu.

A vision of sustainable living


Nick Spencer paints a picture of what a relationally and environmentally sustainable society might look like today.

There is no obvious and incontrovertible vision of sustainable living to which we should aspire. There will be as many impressions of the genuinely sustainable society as there are people to advocate them.

Imagining a sustainable society does not demand a kind of eco-fascism that seeks to impose its vision of the future on all, threatening violence to recalcitrants and sceptics. What follows, therefore, is a vision, not a template, of what sustainable living might look like at some point in the not-too-distant future.
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