Conversations in St Paul’s Churchyard

by James Mercer

On the first Friday, (which seems along time ago now in the brief history of the protest outside St Paul’s), we walked around the encampment, en route to another destination. We were invited to join a conversation.

Wearing clerical collars undoubtedly gave us entrée to the event. However, there was a perceptible wariness amongst some of the protesters - an implicit assumption that clerics would de facto be on side of 'order' and therefore not immediately sympathetic to the protestors anarchy, however tidy and well mannered.

A young woman was dexterously sewing shocking pink letters to a large green banner bearing the words 'Capitalism is Crisis', needle, thread and material stored in a domestically ordered tent.

'I suppose you take the line "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's"?’ was the challenge from a companion.

In answer, I replied 'Well yes, but that may not mean quite what we think it may mean'.

In the brief conversation that ensued, the presumption that these words of Jesus aligned the church with tacit acceptance and uncritical allegiance to the powers that be, was politely challenged. Was Jesus not saying in effect 'pay back Caesar in his own coin'? Were these perhaps words of covert protest against the corruption of the impersonal forces of power, wealth and oppression? A call to subvert the self-serving injustice of the status quo? Is that therefore not also the task of the church - to challenge greed and hold the powerful to account?

A small and eager group joined the conversation. One protester, self identifying as a Christian, was there because he believed that is where Jesus would be - in the tents, not with the establishment. Another was a 'street evangelist for Greenpeace', there to protest against the unsustainable abuses of unaccountable capitalism and argue for more creative, constructive, humane distribution of wealth, favouring the environment and the world's poor.

Zoe Williams of the Guardian requested permission to join in the exchange. The next day quotations appeared in the paper:

“...in the Gospels, Jesus makes a courageous and subversive stand against the abuse and corruption of the powers that be and against the implicit assumption that the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer.

“ you feel Jesus’s anger in his protest, (in the account of the over turning of the tables in the Temple) which wasn’t actually all that peaceful.

“The heart of the Gospel is one of outrageous generosity - the greed that is protested against here, is not generous.”

That's about right.

Rather than ‘WWJD’, in this case 'WMJS’, (‘What might Jesus say?’) may be more appropriate.

Might he say to those instinctively protesting against injustice and seeking intuitively to articulate a better way, 'the Kingdom of God is close at hand'?

Then a notice to the protestors to leave square was issued - by the church...

Two weeks on and the release of the report ‘Value and Values: Perceptions of Ethics in the City Today’ by the St Paul’s Institute - ironically, harrowingly, delayed by the protest. Tragic Hardyesque miscommunication. St Paul’s all the time had been articulating the concerns of the protestors, prior to the protest.

It may be that this quotation captures some sense of frustration at the way these events have passed....

Sed fugit interea fugit irreparabile tempus, singula dum capti circumvectamur amore

"But meanwhile it flees: time flees irretrievably, while we wander around, prisoners of our love of detail."