One of the secret joys of a religious affairs correspondent’s life is The English Churchman, a fortnightly which calls itself “A Protestant family newspaper”. It has no web site, which makes it difficult to give the full flavour, but, when you google for it, the first two hits come from Ian Paisley’s site. I haven’t seen a paper copy since I left the Independent in 1997 but Steve Bates just sent me some news which shows it maintains its old standards:
“Real purpose of this is to say our old friends at the English Churchman have excelled themselves today with a piece approving slavery. This of course follows that passage in Shortt’s book about Rowan believing the Bible can be updated and no one wld approve of slavery today. Oh yes, the EC would: ‘When an institution such as slavery was abused it was eventually banned. However the form it took in the Old Testament was not permanent and was a form of social security for which many starving people today would be grateful. It was never the best but an emergency help to enable those who had lost all they possessed to get back on their feet again….’ so that’s all right then, just a form of philanthropy really, not necessarily abusive at all…”
Of course, some might say that philanthropy, in the form of the World Bank and the IMF for instance, is a form of slavery.