November Magazine and Events

Dear Friends

We keep Remembrance Sunday on 14^thNovember.  This year, unusually, I shall give an All Age Address so that it will be easier for our young people to enter in to the whole act of worship.

Dates to remember

6^thNovember – Saturday, 11 am in our school: Autumn Fair – Tombola, Raffle, Home-made produce, Crafts, Coffee and biscuits, Lunch of bacon rolls, veggie option, apple pie and cream, cakes. Admission free – invite your friends!

18^thNovember – Thursday, 7.30 until 9 pm in the Vestry: Oldham Reaching Muslims, sharing info and praying together.

21^stNovember – Sunday: Gift Day.

28^thNovember – Advent Sunday.

1^stDecember – Wednesday at the Queen Elizabeth Hall:  Interfaith Forum Festival of Light, 5 pm static displays by young people, 6.30 pm main programme.  Necessary free tickets available from me.

Gift Day – 21^stNovember

Most of you know that after many years of careful nursing by Gordon Lees, the church boiler is causing serious concern.  Because we expected this, plans for a replacement are well in hand, but because we have to follow the C of E planning procedures, it is unlikely that the new boiler(s) will be installed before Christmas. We do have enough funds in our reserve to pay for the new boiler(s), but this will mean that we cannot use our capital on annual running costs.  Last year we did spend £2546 of capital on running costs.  To 1^stOctober this year our expenses had increased by £3159 compared to the same period last year though that included exceptional items (painting of railings and external gates, totalling £1578). So, please consider whether or not you can contribute extra per week and/or on Gift Day so that we can meet our running costs.  Not all of us will be able to contribute extra money - which means a greater responsibility for those of us who can.

Yours sincerely

Andrew Dawson

Stewards in a slump – Handling recession

An economic downturn poses challenges for everyone.  Whilst those who lose jobs are likely to be hit the hardest, those building up a pension fund will have seen the value of their pension fund reduce, whilst those living off the interest from previous savings will almost certainly have less interest income coming in.

So how can the principles of Christian Stewardship be maintained during an economic downturn?

‘Stewards in a slump’ offer seven reflections:

1. Count your Blessings – recognising that God provides for us.
2. Count your Cash – the importance of budgeting.
3. Learning Contentment – focusing on what we have,, rather than on what we haven’t got.
4. Simpler Lifestyles – using the downturn to remove clutter from our lives.
5. Keep on Giving – maintaining our support for God’s work, through the Church and through charities.
6. Rebuilding Generous Communities – valuing others around us, and seeking practical ways we can help.
7. A Financial Downturn can be a Spiritual Upturn – how tough economic times might bring us closer to God.

                     COPYRIGHT 2010 THE ARCHBISHOPS’ COUNCIL

Afghanistan’s unjust war

We must apply the just war tradition to our analysis of this conflict.  Otherwise we risk disaster.  Two things this week have made the hellishness of military violence painfully clear. The first, WikiLeaks' Afghanistan war logs, describes in detail the horror of civilian casualties and "friendly fire" incidents. The second, from the same theatre, is Sean Smith's chilling video of American marines in southern Helmand. Faced with these portraits of war, empathy for the people caught up in it has been unavoidable.

But empathy alone is not enough. If you're not a pacifist, you accept that war is vile, but at times an inevitable part of life on Earth. The question is when and how it can be morally justified. Hence the importance of the just war tradition. Thinkers like the theologian Thomas Aquinas sought a way of containing war, by thinking through the desperate feelings that combat does and should evoke. The aim is to keep a steady view on the demands of natural justice, even when the fog of war threatens to blur everything.

The war logs in particular afford us a steady view on this current conflict, and what's as unsettling as the tragedy they reveal is the possibility that we lost sight of those demands, at least on occasion. The crucial issue is whether that's happened. An answer can be found by thinking about the relationship between jus ad bellum and jus in bello – the justification for the war itself, and the principles that should operate during the conduct of war. Both matter.

Let's assume the war in Afghanistanis justified, and focus on the jus in bello. One of Aquinas's major contributions was the notion of proportionality: how to assess the bad consequences of otherwise well-intended military action. Michael Walzer, a leading modern just war theorist, notes that simply not to intend the death of civilians is not enough. That's "too easy". Instead, there must be a positive commitment to saving civilian lives, rather than just killing no more than is militarily necessary. "Civilians have a right to something more," he concludes. "And if saving civilian lives means risking soldiers' lives, the risk must be accepted."

This highlights a further painful question: how much extra risk must soldiers bear in order to save civilian lives? It's not a balance that can be determined ahead of time. Individual cases must be considered, as the Afghanistan war logs afford, and again give rise to concern.

It's with the use of heavily armed drones that this comes into particularly sharp focus. In Wired for War, Peter Warren Singer notes that "going to war" has become not so different from "going to work" for many robot operators, in the sense that the risk they face is virtually zero. They might be destroying a target at 4.30pm from the office, and be home by 6pm to read the kids a bedtime story.

Soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan face grave risks. That too is devastatingly obvious. But their sacrifice is undermined when jus in bello is not considered in the round. For what distinguishes war from mass murder is precisely respecting the rights of civilians. Has due care been taken? Have all feasible precautions been made to protect non-combatants, even when the Taliban and al-Qaida erode the distinction between civilians and military by placing combat facilities in residential areas? What the war logs confirm is that remote aerial bombardments cannot always verify targets. Jus in bello is under threat.

This isn't just an abstract argument. As civilians die, so conflict deepens interminably. To ignore the just war tradition now is to run the real danger that automated 21st-century conflict will turn into perpetual war.

Michael Vernon, ‘The Guardian’, 31 July 2010.

Current priorities of St Thomas’- as agreed by Church Council, September  2004

1.  Evangelism/Church Growth out of love for people and because we need new members.

2.  Worship, including Sunday School, Healing, Prayer and Music.

3.  Witness to Asians through individual friendships and through shared work with the community.

4.  Presence, that is letting people know that C of E Christians live and/or worship on the Coppice.

5.  Working with St Paul’s, as we have been requested by the Diocese.