FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Acts of Sacrilege

Rant Number 505       12 September 2012

One day the Prophet Elisha, the Second Book of Kings relates, was going his way when a gang of boys came out of the city of Bethel. They saw the holy man’s bald pate and jeered at him: ‘Go up, you baldhead, go up!’ A mere prank? No way. No one can take liberties with a Prophet of the Lord. Elisha turned around and, in the name of God, he cursed them. Thereupon two huge she-bears came out of the nearby woods and tore the miscreants to pieces – 42 of them. The Prophet then continued on his way.

The sorry Libya episode of the murder of the US Ambassador by a mob, in reaction to a film besmirching the figure of the Prophet Muhammad, presages more painful trouble to come. I don’t know but...a peculiar conjunction of events makes wonder. First, the deed fell on the anniversary of 9/11. Second, last night the priest went to a seminar at Abrar House on Libya – some interesting, voluble characters around. Third, on the way back home, on the Hammersmith platform a sad-looking youth called Muhammad asked me for directions. Non sequitur, perhaps. Or maybe not...

What is no coincidence is my looking up Sir Henry Spelman’s History of Sacrilege. A valuable 1698 essay. I already knew of Spelman from that favourite book of mine, John Aubrey’s Brief Lives. Sacrilegious people and sacrilegious acts, that is what Sir Henry writes about. A topical subject, you will grant me.

The author stresses one fundamental point: sacrilege brings misfortune to its perpetrators. The example of the urchins who dared to mock Prophet Elisha speaks volumes, naturally. Another is the fate of Israel’s wicked King Ahab. Egged on by his mushrika, pagan Queen Jezebel, Ahab set up idolatrous shrines in his kingdom, thereby offending the one true God. Eventually, Ahab was fatally wounded in battle. His men took the King’s body back on his chariot to Samaria. They washed the chariot by a pool and, shamefully, the dogs licked Ahab’s blood, ‘and the harlots washed themselves in it’, as Elisha’s predecessor, Elijah, has prophesied. (I Kings 21:19). Henry VIII, by the way, suffered a similar destiny. The coffin in which his massive, bloated corpse lay at Windsor burst and the dogs lapped up the syphilitic blood and pus. That too had been predicted.

Sacrilege is of course an offence against the sacred. Sacred persons or sacred things. A History of Sacrilege is especially concerned with robbers of church property and sacred buildings, following the great spoliations in England after the Reformation. Spelman points out that those guilty of sacrilege actually bring a curse upon themselves. A man of God, like Elisha can publicly utter the curse but the thing follows is automatic, it follows the very act – God will do it if no one else does. But sacrilege not only entails punishment of those who commit it – it also falls on their families and their descendants. Long lists of examples are offered as proof. Grim!

So perhaps the hot-headed multitudes who are now preparing to shed more blood to avenge the insult done to their Prophet should be told. First, by hypothesis fierce punishment awaits the guilty in the next world. The torments the Qur’an so vividly describes will be their lot. Like drinking boiling water and...no, enough - otherwise Carolyn will accuse me again of overdoing these things. Second, the posterity of those gentlemen, Mr Sam Basice and non-rev. Terry Jones, stand to suffer, too. Third, why take it out on the innocent? Poor envoy Christ Stevens had no hand in the wretched business. Ambassadors by definition are trained to be diplomatic – the last thing an ambassador seeks to do is to insult what is most sacred to a believing people, its religion. So why kill him and the others? It is so brutal, so senseless.

Thank God there are plenty of thoughtful, good Muslims around who disagree with the ghastly violence. A splendid Arab chap on Twitter tweeted that ‘the killers were away from Islamic ethics’. Absolutely right. Furthermore, there is an established legal mechanism, a procedure in Islam for dealing with insults to the Prophet Muhammad. Sharia’ courts, the right bodies to investigate these matters, have nothing to do with mob rule, kangaroo courts, lynching or the like. It is for a scrupulous judge to examine the evidence, hear witnesses, establish intention and so on. Pity there is no let out, as far as I know, for being idiots, because, from the clip I saw online, the authors may qualify. One Jew and one Christian they are said to be but one thing I do know – they are a disgrace to their religions.

Christians are of course all too familiar with the situation. The faith is attacked and insulted daily in countries which used to be called ‘Christian’. Jesus Christ is fair game. His sacred person is made the object of the most profane and foulest blasphemies. A few evangelicals make mild noises and protest but nobody does anything. ‘Why do you take it lying down?’ a Muslim asked me recently. Good question. Maybe too easy to bleat the obvious truisms: love your enemies, turn the other cheek...but a man has only two cheeks to turn!

At the foot of the Cross Christ prayed for his persecutors: ‘Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they do.’ Note, however, he asked his Father to forgive them – he did not say ‘I forgive you’.

Do Christians lack guts to oppose sacrilege and blasphemy? Certainly hurting the innocent would be no way of defending Christ. Nor is violence per se justified. That is not in accordance with Christian ethics, I tell you. Yet I seem to recall to what John Henry Newman once wrote. I quote from memory: ‘It would be better if this country was a little bit more fanatical, a little bit less tolerant.’ Does it alarm you? Does it make scare you? Good. I hope it does!

©Revd Frank Julian Gelli