Recognising that to the pure all is pure, this from today's BUGB news esweep reminded me of a classic church blooper...

Two years after having one of the lowest birth rates in the world, Georgia is enjoying something of a baby boom, following an intervention from the country's most senior cleric.

The classic blooper runs something like this:

The Little Mothers group meets on Mondays at 2:30.  Those wishing to become little mothers please see the vicar after the service

Sorry BUGB

Last night's Lent meeting was led by one of the Anglican lay readers and was week four of Christ and the Chocolaterie.  We were asked to split into small groups and talk about how we felt about contact with other faiths and other ideologies.  It was fascinating to see the total terror on the faces of some people at even being asked to discuss this in abstract.  It wasn't just the fear of difference but the unthinking terror of the very possibility that one might do so that struck me.  In our small group one person went very red and began to fidget but could not articulate why they felt uncomfortable or uneasy about engaging with people of another worldview.  I can understand and appreciate fear of taint or of being prosyletised; I share the Biblically based concerns over prohibitions on certain practices, but this was, so far as I could tell, unthinking terror.

One person in my small group - a wonderful retied Methodist minister - shared that at an interfaith meeting in Loughborough he'd met one of our local GPs (mine as it happened) who turns out to belong to druidic movement.  'So,' said one of the others turning to me with a glare, 'how do you feel about her now?' As far as I am concerned, she's my GP and so long as she does her job that's fine.

We moved on to talking about other groups in society and how people react to them.  Travellers were mentioned which raised the usual anti-comments and my coments over NIMBY-ism in respect to provision of sites for them earned me more glowers.  I also dared to raise the topic of migrant workers as we now have some in this little corner of the world which probalby concluded my heresy for the night!

Talking to the perosn who had clearly been the most terrified, I offered to lend her my Lion handbook of world religions (don't tell John Parry I own this, he'd kill me!) assuring them it was a nice, safe evangelical perspective.  Still I hit a brick wall - why would I even want to know, was the reply.

It made me realise how far my own thinking has moved over time, how large the gap is between me and some of these folk (I've always been interested to read about other faith traditions) and how narrow-minded and terrified are some parts of the Christian church.  If, as we claim, Christ is Lord and has defeated all that is false, what scares us so much?

One more Lent study to go - it has on the whole been good and I hope people have gained from it.