Friday morning brings The Baptist Times to my letterbox, not usually the highlight of my week but an important connection point with a view of Baptist life primarily, of not exclusively inside BUGB. The BT takes a lot of flack; it is always easier to criticise than to offer something ostensibly better - just ask any editor of church magazines! I would have to say that on the whole the BT is a far more interesting read nowadays than when I first subscribed back on the mid 1990s (indeed, in those days a work colleague and I used to compare frustrations with it regularly!!).
This week's edition struck me as worthy of praise, not damning faint stuff, but genuine appreciation for what is being attempted.
There is a centrefold article with input from Christian groups within the three largest UK parties (pace Wales and Scotand) which will find its way to one of our noticeboards ahead of the upcoming hustings. (If any equivalents in SNP or others want to send me their words I can add them too). There are some provocative, but not aggressive or defensive, letters on extreme politics, women in leadership and the relationship of each to freedom of conscience (there are aslo one or two more typical letters). There are some good book reviews - including a helpful and balanced one on Pullman's new novel (well, I basically agree with it, so it must be OK ;-) ).
I think what I like about the BT these days is that it is less diffident, less defensive, less narrow-shallow, less holy-huddle than it was when I first read it. To be fair, these comments apply to me too, though whether because I'm older and better informed or because the whole world has changed who can definitively determine?
My only gripe (and it's not a major one) is that there are, nowadays, bribes, I mean gifts, offered to new subscribers, whereas those of us who have loyally supported Beattie during her own journey into the present don't get so much as pencil (in the early days of my subscription you got an annual gift of a BT notebook!!). Do I really want gifts? No, of course not, I am just a little sad that it is deemed necessary and even appropriate to offer inducements to new readers.
Anyway, well done all at BT for this excellent edition.
Comments
I think the editor, Mark Woods, deserves credit for much of what you describe. I am, perhaps, BT's greatest critic, and have frequently wondered what exactly it is still there for - but even I have to admit it is not the awful rag it used to be.
When we were at college, a previous editor described it as 'the religious Daily Mail.' Unsurprisingly, I was never tempted to subscribe!
Mark has turned it round - although I have to wonder what the future holds for a printed newspaper aiming at the shrinking membership of a single denomination.
When I next et round to updating Dancing Scarecrow, I have a hymn which Mark has written which I will put up there. Watch the DS space!
Wow, when we were at college no one had the audacity to call it anything! I think you're right, Mark and his team have worked tirelessly to give us what we now take for granted. And if not the Independent at least it's not the Mail any more!