10. On The Law and The Spirit.

Dearly Beloved,

A few years ago my wife and I were returning home on top of a bus to west London. When we turned into the stop by the Westfield Shopping center in Shepherd's bush we were surprised to see about forty bodies lying on the ground. In the middle of the bodies stood a rather bored looking policeman. This was a protest that had crossed the Atlantic and marked one of the frequent police shootings of an unarmed black person in the USA. I was disquieted that somehow there was an implication against the UK police force too, despite that force being largely unarmed.

Only a couple of weeks ago four people were acquitted of criminal damage for pulling down and pushing into the dry dock in Bristol, the statue of Edward Colston who was a generous benefactor to the City, but who had made his fortune on the back of the slave trade as an investor and officer of the Royal Africa Company. Bristol has a large black population and there was a general feeling of dissatisfaction that such a man was celebrated with a statue on the docks.

The acquittal led to a lively discussion between me and my wife. She thought the letter of the law should be paramount in a court of law. I took the view that we had a jury system so that ordinary men and women could add their experience of life to making the judgment, and as local, Bristol, people they understood the complex problems that had led to the damage to the statue better than any magistrates or judge sitting alone would have done.

Surely our discussion highlighted one of the most controversial and much misunderstood aspects of Christian teaching, that by Paul of Tarsus on the role of legal obligations verses the action of the spirit in human, notably Christian, affairs? Paul's profound and radical argument seems to be that Christ replaces the law. He asks the Galatians “Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard? (i.e. the crucifixion and suffering of Jesus). And Paul writes:

“But now that faith has come we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:25-28).

So perhaps the acquittal of the Colston four, as they have become known, was a profoundly Christian outcome? Paul's letter quoted above really destroys the boundaries that we humans draw around one another whether of race, class or religion -- and then we fight. The Bristol acquittal reflects that abolition of division. After all the accused were all white and were acting to support people who they saw as in danger of being derided and belittled – black people. The Jury agreed, and even the police had been reticent about initiating a prosecution because they did not want to be associated with the sort of racial oppression which some parts of the police forces in the USA are associated. The prosecution was only initiated after the irregular intervention of the Home Secretary.

Despite the difficulty of understanding and applying Paul's writings on the law and the spirit which are often misunderstood as promoting libertarianism, it is surely true that the acquittal of the Colston four will have done more for improving race relations in the United Kingdom and stemming the need for protest, than any string of legal prosecutions ever would. A barrier is being removed, just as Paul foresees.

Peace and Grace to you all, 

Paul.





A Royal Naval Blacksmith on HMS Sphinx removing a shackle from an escaped slave from the northern coast of Muscat and Oman in 1907. 
Attribution: Able Seaman Joseph Chadwick (b.1881). Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth.


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