Comparing Difference with a Third Way

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 30 September 2007 13:47:58

The trip from no-where-ville on sea to some-where-quite importantville in order to do banking on a Saturday saw me enter a bookshop in need of help . It being the end of the month I was doing my usual magazine shop.

I noticed another challenger on the shelves and so as well as Third Way I picked up The Difference which is apparently a bi-monthly magazine similar to Third Way.

Upon first sight there is not much difference between either magazine (both need to put bar codes on their covers so the poor staff in the book shop have an easier life). They both appear to focus on social justice and engagement with current affairs and culture from a broadly evangelical perspective and their pages are peppered with adverts from the standard Christian types of organisation.

However, upon closer inspection it becomes clear that The Difference is different to Third Way in one important way, where as Third Way is an independent magazine The Difference is actually the magazine of The Conservative Christian Fellowship . Now I don't have a problem with the Conservative Christian Fellowship publishing a magazine with a number of interesting articles in it, but I do have a problem when this isn't clearly stated either on the cover, or within the blurb about the editorial committee.

Having missed the "write to us" address at the bottom of the letters page and the content information saying "CCF sign up today -join the Conservative Christian Fellowship- page 52" my suspicions actually got aroused first of all when I started reading the article entitled "Free Trade - the only rational option". This is not normally the rallying cry of the social progressives, but hey, it could just have been a provocative article. The riddle was only actually properly solved on page 22 when I saw the advert trying to attract advertising for the magazine. This advert stated exactly what the background of the magazine is.

For me the most worrying aspects were
(i) the way, despite an apparent multi-cultural approach and evident attempt to appeal to members of the black churches several of the magazines articles had that stench of misusing Christianity to sell patriotism in the most dangerous way.
(ii) the way that whilst not hiding the nature of the magazine they did not go out of their way to make it clear who was publishing it.

Having read the magazine, I think it is actually worth reading in order to see how the religious right in this country is mobilising and the ideas they are seeking to promote. Don't get me wrong I don't disagree with everything they are doing or everything that was said in the magazine, but it is clear with the content of the magazine and the way it is sold that there is an agenda being promoted here. There is clearly a strong movement growing in the UK which is based on a mix of New Right politics and conservative evangelical Christianity and both the Christians and the New Right appear to be seeking to use the other to advance their own causes.

I am ready to be wrong and rightly accused of being a conspiracy theorist, but it would be interesting to know exactly what the links are between the following organisations:
CCF , UCCF and Lawyers Christian Fellowship and if it was pure co-incidence that Exeter was where UCCF decided to issue its legal challenge last year.

Having said all that though, I actually do think we should pray for the work of all these organisations because amongst the worrying stuff they are actually doing quite a bit of good work aswell.