What is prophetic witness? A question I asked myself when I was invited to summer gathering, and other friends have asked me to explain when I said that this was our topic for this morning.
I found this (from quakerinfo.com) helpful:
“Environmentally minded Friends are coming to focus more and more on the two essential tasks of the prophet: first, to demonstrate, through their own deeds and lives, the possibilities for a greater righteousness that exist here in God’s world; and second, to recall the wrongdoers from their wrongdoings, as the prophet Nathan did with King David. For we have begun to see that such a reformation and redemption of the destroyers — meaning by “destroyers”, both ourselves and others — is the central business of God’s environmental movement.”
I think this sums up, in rather more portentous words than I would use, the role that I unexpectedly found myself in as a Green MSP.
But first, let me explain a bit more about my approach. There is a growing recognition that we are living unsustainably- that is using up the resources of the planet at rate far beyond the replacement rate. This what makes me an environmentalist. I believe that the solution to this is to share the resources we have better, which is what makes me a Green. All this is rooted in an understanding that goes beyond the survival of our species, or ’stewardship’, but is based on the presence of the sprit within the wonder of creation – there is that of God in everything, as well as everyone, which would say makes me a green Quaker. So that’s my witness. I make no claim that all quakers should be green, anymore than all greens should be quakers but it’s what works for me
The experience of being a Green MSP was very different to my previous career as an environmental campaigner. In particular I wasn’t just appealing to my usual audience a self-selected group who are likely to be amenable to a message of “reformation and redemption” but to my entire electorate. Since I was elected as a top-up Member of the Scottish Parliament for the whole of Lothian region, including Edinburgh, this amounted to over 600,000 people. My new challenge was to find a way to move the widest audience possible, taking me way out of the comfort zone of the like-minded souls I had been engaging with before..
So what did I learn from being placed in this unexpected role of prophetic witness? Given that I was promoting in parliament a series of lifestyle choices, of modifying personal behavior, not just the behavior of the state or of industry, there was an expectation that I would be an exemplar of the lifestyle I advocated. I had always believed that, in the words of Mahatma Gandhi you should ‘be the change you want see in the world’ but suddenly becoming a public figure with intense scrutiny showed up the difficulties of this.
While ‘being the change’ is central to avoiding the worst sort of self-righteous hypocrisy, it cuts you off from the people you are seeking to change. Society is already changing so fast, things are already difficult and complication, who wants to add new layers of difficulty and complication? As one woman said to me at a hustings “So not only should I chose low-GI, low cholesterol food and eat my five portions a day, I should now worry about whether it is organic, fair-trade and local”. So it is easy for even a minor change in your own life to appear to be a change so radical, that there appears to be an impossible gulf between the life you advocate and the life they lead.
What always surprised me was that a lot of what I proposed didn’t seem like such huge changes. Car ownership and use is a good example – mass car ownership is a relatively recent development. In 1961 there were 6.2 million licensed cars in the UK. Forty years later the figure was 26.4 Million. People so quickly come to rely on their cars, that anyone who proposes even to slightly restrict the use of the car in the name of the climate is quickly branded a lunatic.
One of the big campaigns I was involved in was in support of a London-style congestion charge for Edinburgh. A campaign we lost overwhelmingly. When your local wholefood shop owner berates you in a fairly a hostile fashion for restricting his freedom to drive his car round Edinburgh you know you’ve lost people somewhere.
Now I had all my statistics, I could talk about climate change for hours on end. I even dressed up as a polar bear for a with a sign saying “polar bears say yes to congestion charging; no to climate change”. But I might as well have worn a sandwich board saying “repent, sinners, for the end of the world is nigh”. Intangibles, like climate change, or the life beyond, move only a small proportion of the population.
I failed to demonstrate that life without a car did not mean a return to sack-cloth and ashes. The purpose of the prophetic witness is to get others to change. While the Old Testament prophets could influence people thousands of years ago, their techniques can no longer be relied upon…
And the other big change from thousands of years ago is the arrival of the mass media. For the media, interesting coverage is debate and controversy, not consensus and agreement. So I found myself in the role of controversialist if I was to get coverage, campaign against this road or against this new bridge, or even explaining why foreign holidays are bad for the climate, and we should all spend our summers in sunny Scotland instead. Telling the truth, but not a particularly appealing truth.
So what is to be done – I see a critical gap between what inspires me – the experience of the divine in all creation, the massive threats of climate change, of nuclear annihilation on the one hand, and what actually motivates most people to change their lives. Sure, for some people climate change is an immediate concern. They will watch ‘an Inconvenient truth’ and be inspired to act.
But for most people Climate change is very big, very distant and completely invisible. It’s another thing to worry about, but simply trying to get on with life in an increasingly stressful world will take priority. Therefore to achieve change we must work on a level that is small, local and visible. We have the mystical experiences that inspire us, a concern for the whole of humanity, the whole of creation, but if this means we exclude those who haven’t had similar mystical experiences we will fail in our witness.
But I am now taking the opportunity to reflect on what Quaker traditions can do to help with this. I thought the thing that would help me the most as an MSP in Quakerism was the inspirational witness of other Quakers and the strength of purpose to keep fighting for what i believe in. What I actually found important was not finding the energy to keep up the struggle – I actually found that I became so addicted to the adrenaline rush that the fighting part was easy. Those around me found that I became much more aggressive, and much more likely to treat a chat with friends as an opportunity to replay a parliamentary debate. So what i needed from the Quaker tradition was the quiet. It was the chance to reflect and take a break from the struggle. In particular, to get away from the oppositional mindset of politics – everything your opponent says is complete tosh. But if you are trying to persuade people, this lack of respect is not a good place to start.
I really did start to wonder, as I knocked on peoples doors in my politicians smart suit, to hand out various green tracts, why I had ended up with this very Mormon style of evangelizing.?
So, any effective modern prophetic witness must start with respect, humility and practical action. You need start from this very Quakerly place, if you are to move the whole mass of the population, since everyone will have to alter the way they live if we are to avoid climate change. Rather than trying to scare people into action, I found we needed to point to the improvements in their own quality of life. Most of the steps needed to avoid climate change will have other more tangible benefits. Concentrating on these benefits, rather than branding everything as ‘stopping climate change’ seems to be much more successful.
The need for prophetic witness is probably greater than it has ever been. But for faith to give rise to effective action, it must be based on a respect for those whose lives you seek to change.
